Ill 



1 !j|.:i.«iia.i^'!Si,::!l 



^mm 



m 




n 





•^ 




m 




Class T "^ 5 u 7 
Boole . A % 
Copyright]^? 

COPVRIGHT DEPOSnV 



Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
in 2011 witii funding from 
Tine Library of Congress 



littp://www.arGliive.org/details/modernprosepoetrOOaslim 



MODERN 
PROSE AND POETRY 

FOR 

SECONDARY SCHOOLS 

EDITED 

WITH NOTES, STUDY HELPS, AND 
READING LISTS 

BY 

MARGARET ASHMUN, M.A. 

Formerly Instructor in English in the University of Wisconsin 
Editor of Prose Literature for Secondary Schools 




BOSTON NEW TOEK CHICAGO 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
(^1)e IMtsx^ibt pce^jj CambciDge 



FSS0 7 
.As 



COPYRIGHT, I9I4, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



All selections in this book are used by special permission of, and 
arrangement with, the owners of the copyrights. 



MAY II 1914 



^fie 3S.ibersiiIie 3l^nifi 

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 



:^^ 



^JCLA3 7175 7 
/ 



PREFACE 

It is pleasant to note, among teachers o£ literature 
in the high school, a growing (or perhaps one should say 
an established) conviction that the pupil's enjoyment 
of what he reads ought to be the chief consideration in 
the work. From such enjoyment, it is conceded, come 
the knowledge and the power that are the end of 
study. All profitable literature work in the secondary 
grades must be based upon the unforced attention and 
activity of the student. 

An inevitable phase of this liberal attitude is a readi- 
ness to promote the study of modern authors. It is 
now the generally accepted view that many pieces 
of recent literature are more suitable for young peo- 
ple's reading than the old and conventionally approved 
classics. This is not to say that the really readable 
classics should be discarded, since they have their own 
place and their own value. Yet it is everywhere ad- 
mitted that modern literature should be given its op- 
portunity to appeal to high school students, and that 
at some stage in their course it should receive its due 
share of recognition. The mere fact that modern writers 
are, in point of material and style, less remote than 
the classic authors from the immediate interests of the 
students is sufficient to recommend them. Then, too, 
since young people are, in the nature of things, con- 
stantly brought into contact with some form of modern 
literature, they need to be provided with a standard of 
criticism and choice. 



iv PREFACE 

The present volume is an attempt to assemble, in a 
convenient manner, a number of selections from recent 
literature, such as high school students in the first or 
second year may understand and enjoy. These selec- 
tions are not all equally difficult. Some need to be 
read rapidly for their intrinsic interest ; others de- 
serve more analysis of form and content ; still others 
demand careful intensive study. This diversity of 
method is almost a necessity in a full year's course in 
reading, in which rigidity and monotony ought above 
all things to be avoided. 

Although convinced that the larger part of the work 
of the first two high school years should be devoted to 
the study of prose, the editor has here included what 
she believes to be a just proportion of poetry. The 
poems have been chosen with a view to the fact that 
they are varied in form and sentiment ; and that they 
exhibit in no small degree the tendencies of modern 
poetic thought, with its love of nature and its human- 
itarian impulses. 

An attempt has been made to present examples of 
the most usual and readable forms of prose composi- 
tion — narration, the account of travel, the personal 
essay, and serious exposition. The authors of these 
selections possess without exception that distinction 
of style which entitles them to a high rank in litera- 
ture and makes them inspiring models for the unskilled 
writer. 

A word may be said as to the intention of the study 
helps and lists of readings. The object of this equip- 
ment is to conserve the energies of the teacher and 
direct the activities of the student. It is by no means 
expected that any one class will be able to make use 
of all the material provided ; yet it is hoped that a 



PREFACE V 

considerable amount may prove available to every 
group that has access to the text. 

The study questions serve to concentrate the read- 
ing of the students, in order to prevent that aimless 
wandering of eye and mind, which with many pupils 
passes for study. Doubtless something would in most 
instances be gained if these questions were supple- 
mented by specific directions from the teacher. 

Lists of theme subjects accompany the selections, so 
that the work in composition may be to a large extent 
correlated with that in literature.^ The plan of utiliz- 
ing the newly stimulated interests of the pupils for 
training in composition is not a new one ; its value has 
been proved. Modem Prose and Poetry aims to make 
the most of such correlation, at the same time drawing 
upon the personal experience of the students, to the elim- 
ination of all that is perfunctory and formal. Typical 
outlines (suggestions for theme writing) are provided ; 
these, however, cannot serve in all cases, and the teacher 
must help the pupils in planning their themes, or give 
them such training as will enable them to make outlines 
for themselves. 

It will be noted that some suggestions are presented 
for the dramatization of simple passages of narration, 
and for original composition of dramatic fragments. In 
an age when the trend of popular interest is unquestion- 
ably toward the drama, such suggestions need no defense. 
The study of dramatic composition may be granted as 
much or as little attention as the teacher thinks wise. 
In any event, it will afford an opportunity for a dis- 
cussion of the drama and will serve, in an elementary 
way, to train the pupil's judgment as to the difference 

^ See Bleyer, W. G. : Introduction to Prose Literature/or Secondary 
Schools. 



vi PREFACE 

between good and bad plays. Especially can this end 
be accomplished if some of the plays mentioned in the 
lists be read by the class or by individual students. 

A few simple exercises in the writing of poetry have 
been inserted, in order to give the pupils encourage- 
ment and assistance in trying their skill in verse. It 
is not intended that this work shall be done for the ex- 
cellence of its results, but rather for the development of 
the pupil's ingenuity and the increasing of his respect 
for the poet and the poetic art. 

The collateral readings are appended for the use 
of those teachers who wish to carry on a course of out- 
side reading in connection with the regular work of 
the class. These lists have been made somewhat ex- 
tensive and varied, in order that they may fit the tastes 
and opportunities of many teachers and pupils. In 
some cases, the collateral work may be presented by 
the teacher, to elaborate a subject in which the class has 
become interested ; or individual pupils may prepare 
themselves and speak to the class about what they 
have read ; or all the pupils may read for pleasure 
alone, merely reporting the extent of their reading, 
for the teacher's approval. The outside reading should, 
it is needless to say, be treated as a privilege and not 
as a mechanical task. The possibilities of this work 
will be increased if the teacher familiarizes herself 
with the material in the collateral lists, so that she 
can adapt the home readings to the tastes of the class 
and of specific pupils. The miscellaneous lists given 
at the close of the book are intended to supplement 
the lists accompanying the selections, and to offer some 
assistance in the choice of books for a high school 
library. M. A. 

New York, February, 1914. 



CONTENTS 

A Day at Laguekre's . . . F. Hopkinson Smith . 1 

Quite So Thomas Bailey Aldrich 21 

(In Marjorie Daw, and Other 
Stories) 

Pan in Wall Street. . . . Edmund Clarence Sted- 

man 42 

The Hand of Lincoln . . . Edmund Clarence Sted- 

man 48 

Jean Valjean Augusta Stevenson , . 52 

(In A Dramatic Reader, Book 
Five) 

A Combat on the Sands . . Mary Johnston ... 65 
(From To Have and to Hold, 
Chapters XXI and XXII) 

The Grasshopper Edith M. Thomas . . 80 

MoLY Edith M. Thomas . . 83 

The Promised Land .... Mary Antin .... 85 

(From Chapter IX of The 
Promised Land) 

Warble for Lilac-Time . . Walt Whitman . . . 113 

When I Heard the Learn'd 

Astronomer Walt Whitman . . . 115 

Vigil Strange I Kept on the 

Field One Night . . . Walt Whitman . . . 116 

Odysseus in Phaeacia . . . Translated hy George 

Herbert Palmer . . 120 

Odysseus George Cabot Lodge . . 139 



viii CONTENTS 

A Romance of Real Life . . William Dean Howells . 141 
(In Suburban Sketches') 

The Wild Ride Louise Imogen Guiney . 161 

Christmas in the Woods . . Dallas Lore Sharp . . 164 
(In The Lay of the Land) 

Gloucestek Moors William Vaughn Moody 179 

Road-Hymn for the Start . William Vaughn Moody 184 

On a Soldier Fallen in the 

Philippines William Vaughn Moody 187 

The Coon Dog Sarah Orne Jewett . . 189 

(In The Queen's Twin, and 
Other Stories) 
On the Life-Mask op Abraham 

Lincoln Richard Watson Gilder 210 

A Fire among the Giants . John Muir 212 

(From Our National Parks) 

Waiting John Burroughs . . . 221 

The Pont du Gard .... Henry James .... 223 
(Chapter XXVI of A Little 
Tour in France) 
The Youngest Son of his Fa- 
ther's House ...... Anna Hempstead Branch 231 

Tennessee's Partner .... Bret Harte ..... 235 

The Course of American His- 
tory r . . . Woodrow Wilson . . 252 

(In Mere Literature) 
What I Know about Garden- 
ing Charles Dudley Warner 268 

(From My Summer in a Gar- 
den) 
The Singing Man Josephine Preston Pea- 
body 280 



CONTENTS ix 

The Dance of the Bon-Odori Lafcadio Hearn . . . 291 
(FtotOl Glimpses of Unfamiliar 
Japan, Volume I, Chap- 
ter VI) 

Letters : 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich to William Dean Howells 305 
(From The Life of Thomas Bailey Aldrich by Ferris 
Greenslet) 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich to E. S. Morse .... 305 
(By permission of Professor Morse) 

William Vaughn Moody to Josephine Preston 

Peabody 306 

(From Some Letters of William Vaughn Moody) 

Bret Harte to his Wife 307 

(From The Life of Bret Harte by Henry C. Merwin) 

Lafcadio Hearn to Basil Hall Chamberlain . . 309 
(From Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Hearn) 

Charles Eliot Norton to William Dean Howells 311 
(From Letters of Charles Eliot Norton) 

Exercises in Dramatic Composition 313 

Modern Books for Home Reading 319 



MODERN PROSE AND POETRY 
FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 



A DAY AT LAGUEREE'S 

F. HOPKINSON SMITH 

It is the most delightful of French inns, in the 
quaintest of French settlements. As you rush by in 
one of the innumerable trains that pass it daily, you 
may catch glimpses of tall trees trailing their branches 
in the still stream, — hardly a dozen yards wide, — 
of flocks of white ducks paddling together, and of 
queer punts drawn up on the shelving shore or tied 
to soggy, patched-up landing-stairs. 

If the sun shines, you can see, now and then, be- 
tween the trees, a figure kneeling at the water's edge, 
bending over a pile of clothes, washing, — her head 
bound with a red handkerchief. 

If you are quick, the miniature river will open just 
before you round the curve, disclosing in the distance 
groups of willows, and a rickety foot-bridge perched 
up on poles to keep it dry. All this you see in a 
flash. 

But you must stop at the old-fashioned station, 
within ten minutes of the Harlem River, cross the 
road, skirt an old garden bound with a fence and 
bursting with flowers, and so pass on through a bare 
field to the water's edge, before you catch sight of the 
cosy little houses lining the banks, with garden fences 



2 F. HOPKINSON SMITH 

cutting into the water, the arbors covered with tangled 
vines, and the boats crossing back and forth. 

I have a love for the out-of-the-way places of the 
earth when they bristle all over with the quaint and 
the old and the odd, and are mouldy with the pictur- 
esque. But here is an in-the-way place, all sunshine and 
shimmer, with never a fringe of mould upon it, and 
yet you lose your heart at a glance. It is as charming 
in its boat life as an old Holland canal ; it is as 
delightful in its shore life as the Seine ; and it is as 
picturesque and entrancing in its sylvan beauty as 
the most exquisite of English streams. 

The thousands of workaday souls who pass this 
spot daily in their whirl out and in the great city may 
catch all these glimpses of shade and sunlight over 
the edges of their journals, and any one of them liv- 
ing near the city's centre, with a stout pair of legs in 
his knickerbockers and the breath of the morning in 
his heart, can reach it afoot any day before breakfast ; 
and yet not one in a hundred knows that this ideal 
nook exists. 

Even this small percentage would be apt to tell of 
the delights of Devonshire and of the charm of the 
upper Thames, with its tall rushes and low-thatched 
houses and quaint bridges, as if the picturesque ended 
there ; forgetting that right here at home there wan- 
ders many a stream with its breast all silver that the 
trees courtesy to as it sings through meadows waist- 
high in lush grass, — as exquisite a picture as can be 
found this beautiful land over. 

So, this being an old tramping-ground of mine, I 
have left the station with its noise and dust behind 
me this lovely morning in June, have stopped long 
enough to twist a bunch of sweet peas through the 



A DAY AT LAGUERRE'S 3 

garden fence, and am standing on the bank waiting 
for some sign of life at Madame Laguerre's. I dis- 
cover that there is no boat on my side of the stream. 
But that is of no moment. On the other side, within 
a biscuit's toss, so narrow is it, there are two boats ; 
and on the landing- wharf, which is only a few planks 
wide, supporting a tumble-down flight of steps leading 
to a vine-covered terrace above, rest the oars. 

I lay my traps down on the bank and begin at the 
top of my voice : — 

" Madame Laguerre ! Madame Laguerre ! Send 
Lucette with the boat." 

For a long time there is no response. A young girl 
drawing water a short distance below, hearing my 
cries, says she will come ; and some children above, 
who know me, begin paddling over. I decline them 
all. Experience tells me it is better to wait for 
madame. 

In a few minutes she pushes aside the leaves, peers 
through, and calls out : — 

" Ah ! it is that horrible painter. Go away ! I have 
nothing for you. You are hungry again that you 
come? " 

" Very, madame. Where is Lucette ? " 

"Lucette! Lucette! It is always Lucette. Lu- 
c-e-t-t-e ! " This in a shrill key. " It is the painter. 
Come quick." 

I have known Lucette for years, even when she was 
a barefooted little tangle-hair, peeping at me with her 
great brown eyes from beneath her ragged straw hat. 
She wears high-heeled slippers now, and sometimes on 
Sundays dainty silk stockings, and her hair is braided 
down her back, little French Marguerite that she is, 
and her hat is never ragged any more, nor her hair 



4 F. HOPKINSON SMITH 

tangled. Her eyes, though, are still the same velvety, 
half -drooping eyes, always opening and shutting and 
never still. 

As she springs into the boat and pulls towards me 
I note how round and trim she is, and before we have 
landed at Madame Laguerre's feet I have counted up 
Lucette's birthdays, — those that I know myself, — 
and find to my surprise that she must be eighteen. 
We have always been the best of friends, Lucette and 
I, ever since she looked over my shoulder years ago 
and watched me dot in the outlines of her boat, with 
her dog Mustif sitting demurely in the bow. 

Madame, her mother, begins again : — 

" Do you know that it is Saturday that you come 
again to bother? Now it will be ^jilet^ of course, with 
mushrooms and tomato salad ; and there are no mush- 
rooms, and no tomatoes, and nothing. You are horri- 
ble. Then, when I get it ready, you say you will come 
at three. 'Yes, madame ; at three,' — mimicking me, 
— ' sure, very sure.' But it is four, five, o'clock — and 
then everything is burned up waiting. Ah ! I know 
you."_ 

This goes on always, and has for years. Presently 
she softens, for she is the most tender-hearted of 
women, and would do anything in the world to please 
me. 

" But, then, you will be tired, and of course you 
must have something. I remember now there is a 
chicken. How will the chicken do? Oh, the chicken 
it is lovely, charmant. And some pease — fresh. 
Monsieur picked them himself this morning. And 
some Roquefort, with an olive. Ah ! You leave it to 
me ; but at three — no later — not one minute. Sacre I 
Vous etes le didble ! " 



A DAY AT LAGUERRE'S 5 

As we walk under the arbor and by the great trees, 
towards the cottage, Lucette following with the oars, 
I inquire after monsieur, and find that he is in the 
city, and very well and very busy, and will return at 
sundown. He has a shop of his own in the upper part 
where he makes passe-partouts. Here, at his home, 
madame maintains a simple restaurant for tramps 
like me. 

These delightful people are old friends of mine, 
Francois Laguerre and his wife and their only child 
Lucette. They have lived here for nearly a quarter 
of a century. He is a straight, silver-haired old 
Frenchman of sixty, who left Paris, between two suns, 
nearly forty years ago, with a gendarme close at his 
heels, a red cockade under his coat, and an intense 
hatred in his heart for that " little nobody," Napo- 
leon III. 

If you met him on the boulevard you would look 
for the decoration on his lapel, remarking to yourself, 
" Some retired officer on half pay." If you met him 
at the railway station opposite, you would say, "A 
French professor returning to his school." Both of 
these surmises are partly wrong, and both partly 
right. Monsieur Laguerre has had a history. One 
can see by the deep lines in his forehead and by the 
firm set of his eyes and mouth that it has been an 
eventful one. 

His wife is a few years his junior, short and stout, 
and thoroughly French down to the very toes of her 
felt slippers. She is devoted to Francois and Lucette, 
the best of cooks, and, in spite of her scoldings, good- 
nature itself. As soon as she hears me calling, there 
arise before her the visions of many delightful dinners 
prepared for me by her own hand and ready to the 



6 F. HOPKINSON SMITH 

minute — all spoiled by my belated sketches. So she 
begins to scold before I am out of the boat or in it, 
for that matter. 

Across the fence next to Laguerre's lives a con- 
frere, a brother exile, Monsieur Marraosette, who also 
has a shop in the city, where he carves fine ivories. 
Monsieur Marmosette has only one son. He too is 
named Francois, after his father's old friend. Farther 
down on both sides of the narrow stream front the 
cottages of other friends, all Frenchmen ; and near 
the propped-up bridge an Italian who knew Garibaldi 
burrows in a low, slanting cabin, which is covered with 
vines. I remember a dish of spaghetti under those 
vines, and a flask of Chianti from its cellar, all cob- 
webs and plaited straw, that left a taste of Venice in 
my mouth for days. 

As there is only the great bridge above, which helps 
the country road across the little stream, and the little 
foot-bridge below, and as there is no path or road, — 
all the houses fronting the water, — the Bronx here 
is really the only highway, and so everybody must 
needs keep a boat. This is why the stream is crowded 
in the warm afternoons with all sorts of water craft 
loaded with whole families, even to the babies, taking 
the air, or crossing from bank to bank in their daily 
pursuits. 

There is a quality which one never sees in Nature 
until she has been rough-handled by man and has out- 
lived the usage. It is the picturesque. In the deep 
recesses of the primeval forest, along the mountain- 
slope, and away up the tumbling brook, Nature may 
be majestic, beautiful, and even sublime ; but she is 
never picturesque. This quality comes only after the 
axe and the saw have let the sunlight into the dense 



A DAY AT LAGUERRE'S 7 

tangle and have scattered the falling timber, or the 
round of the water-wheel has divided the rush of the 
brook. It is so here. Some hundred years ago, along 
this quiet, silvery stream were encamped the troops of 
the struggling colonies, and, later, the great estates 
of the survivors stretched on each side for miles. The 
willows that now fringe these banks were saplings 
then ; and they and the great butternuts were only 
spared because their arching limbs shaded the cattle 
knee-deep along the shelving banks. 

Then came the long interval that succeeds that 
deadly conversion of the once sweet farming lands, 
redolent with clover, into that barren waste — subur- 
ban property. The conflict that had lasted since the 
days when the pioneer's axe first rang through the 
stillness of the forest was nearly over ; Nature saw her 
chance, took courage, and began that regeneration 
which is exclusively her own. The weeds ran riot ; tall 
grasses shot up into the sunlight, concealing the once 
well-trimmed banks ; and great tangles of underbrush 
and alders made lusty efforts to hide the traces of 
man's unceasing cruelty. Lastly came this little group 
of poor people from the Seine and the Marne and lent 
a helping hand, bringing with them something of their 
old life at home, — their boats, rude landings, patched- 
up water-stairs, fences, arbors, and vine-covered cot- 
tages, — unconsciously completing the picture and 
adding the one thing needful — a human touch. So 
Nature, having outlived the wrongs of a hundred years, 
has here with busy fingers so woven a web of weed, 
moss, trailing vine, and low-branching tree that there 
is seen a newer and more entrancing quality in her 
beauty, which, for want of a better term, we call the 
picturesque. 



8 F. HOPKINSON SMITH 

But madame is calling that the big boat must be 
bailed out ; that if I am ever coming back to dinner 
it is absolutely necessary that I should go away. This 
boat is not of extraordinary size. It is called the big 
boat from the fact that it has one more seat than the 
one in which Lucette rowed me over; and not being 
much in use except on Sunday, is generally half full 
of water. Lucette insists on doing the bailing. She 
has very often performed this service, and I have al- 
ways considered it as included in the curious scrawl 
of a bill which madame gravely presents at the end of 
each of my days here, beginning in small printed type 
with " Francois Laguerre, Restaurant rran9ais," and 
ending with " Coffee 10 cents." 

But this time I resist, remarking that she will hurt 
her hands and soil her shoes, and that it is all right 
as it is. 

To this Francois the younger, who is leaning over 
the fence, agrees, telling Lucette to wait until he gets 
a pail. 

Lucette catches his eye, colors a little, and says she 
will fetch it. 

There is a break in the palings through which they 
both disappear, but I am half-way out on the stream, 
with my traps and umbrella on the seat in front and 
my coat and waistcoat tucked under the bow, before 
they return. 

For half a mile down-stream there is barely a cur- 
rent. Then comes a break of a dozen yards just below 
the perched - up bridge, and the stream divides, one 
part rushing like a mill-race, and the other spreading 
itself softly around the roots of leaning willows, ooz- 
ing through beds of water-plants, and creeping under 
masses of wild grapes and underbrush. Below this is 



A DAY AT LAGUERRE'S 9 

a broad pasture fringed with another and larger 
growth of willows. Here the weeds are breast-high, 
and in early autumn they burst into purple asters, and 
white immortelles, and goldenrod, and flaming sumac. 

If a painter had a lifetime to spare, and loved this 
sort of material, — the willows, hillsides, and winding 
stream, — he would grow old and weary before he 
could paint it all ; and yet no two of his compositions 
need be alike. I have tied my boat under these same 
willows for ten years back, and I have not yet ex- 
hausted one corner of this neglected pasture. 

There may be those who go a-fishing and enjoy it. 
The arranging and selecting of flies, the joining of 
rods, the prospective comfort in high water-boots, the 
creel with the leather strap, — every crease in it a re- 
minder of some day without care or fret, — all this 
may bring the flush to the cheek and the eager kind- 
ling of the eye, and a certain sort of rest and happi- 
ness may come with it ; but — they have never gone 
a-sketching ! Hauled up on the wet bank in the long 
grass is your boat, with the frayed end of the painter 
tied around some willow that offers a helping root. 
Within a stone's throw, under a great branching of 
gnarled trees, is a nook where the curious sun, peep- 
ing at you through the interlaced leaves, will stencil 
Japanese shadows on your white umbrella. Then the 
trap is unstrapped, the stool opened, the easel put up, 
and you set your palette. The critical eye with which 
you look over your brush-case and the care with which 
you try each feather point upon your thumb-nail are 
but an index of your enjoyment. 

Now you are ready. You loosen your cravat, hang 
your coat to some rustic peg in the creviced bark of 
the tree behind you, seize a bit of charcoal from your 



10 F. HOPKINSON SMITH 

bag, sweep your eye around, and dash in a few guid- 
ing strokes. Above is a turquoise sky filled with soft 
white clouds ; behind you the great trunks of the many- 
branched willows ; and away off, under the hot sun, 
the yellow-green of the wasted pasture, dotted with 
patches of rock and weeds, and hemmed in by the low 
hills that slope to the curving stream. 

It is high noon. There is a stillness in the air that 
impresses you, broken only by the low murmur of the 
brook behind and the ceaseless song of the grasshopper 
among the weeds in front. A tired bumblebee hums 
past, rolls lazily over a clover blossom at your feet, 
and has his midday luncheon. Under the maples near 
the river's bend stands a group of horses, their heads 
touching. In the brook below are the patient cattle, 
with patches of sunlight gilding and bronzing their 
backs and sides. Every now and then a breath of cool 
air starts out from some shaded retreat, plays around 
your forehead, and passes on. All nature rests. It is 
her noontime. 

But you work on : an enthusiasm has taken posses- 
sion of you ; the paints mix too slowly ; you use your 
thumb, smearing and blending with a bit of rag — 
anything for the effect. One moment you are glued to 
your seat, your eye riveted on your canvas, the next, 
you are up and backing away, taking it in as a whole, 
then pouncing down upon it quickly, belaboring it with 
your brush. Soon the trees take shape ; the sky forms 
become definite ; the meadow lies flat and loses itself 
in the fringe of willows. 

When all of this begins to grow upon your once blank 
canvas, and some lucky pat matches the exact tone of 
blue-gray haze or shimmer of leaf, or some accidental 
blending of color delights you with its truth, a tingling 



A DAY AT LAGUERRE'S 11 

goes down your backbone, and a rush surges through 
your veins that stirs you as nothing else in your whole 
life will ever do. The reaction comes the next day 
when, in the cold light of your studio, you see how far 
short you have come and how crude and false is your 
best touch compared with the glory of the landscape 
in your mind and heart. But the thrill that it gave 
you will linger forever. 

But I hear a voice behind me calling out : — 

" Monsieur, mamma says that dinner will be ready 
in half an hour. Please do not be late." 

It is Lucette. She and Francois have come down 
in the other boat — the one with the little seat. They 
have moved so noiselessly that I have not even heard 
them. The sketch is nearly finished ; and so, remem- 
bering the good madame, and the Roquefort, and the 
olives, and the many times I have kept her waiting, I 
wash my brushes at once, throw my traps into the 
boat, and pull back through the winding turn, Fran- 
cois taking the mill-race, and in the swiftest part 
springing to the bank and towing Lucette, who sits in 
the stern, her white skirts tucked around her dainty 
feet. 

" Sacre ! He is here. Cest merveilleux / Why did 
you come ? " 

"Because you sent for me, madame, and I am 
hungry." 

" Mon Dieu ! He is hungry, and no chicken ! " 

It is true. The chicken was served that morning to 
another tramp for breakfast, and madame had forgot- 
ten all about it, and had ransacked the settlement for 
its mate. She was too honest a cook to chase another 
into the frying-pan. 

But there was a iilet with mushrooms, and a most 



12 F. HOPKINSON SMITH 

surprising salad of chicory fresh from the garden, and 
the pease were certain, and the Roquefort and the 
olives beyond question. All this she tells me as I walk 
past the table covered with a snow-white cloth and 
spread under the grape-vines overlooking the stream, 
with the trees standing against the sky, their long 
shadows wrinkling down into the water. 

I enter the summer kitchen built out into the gar- 
den, which also covers the old well, let down the bucket, 
and then, taking the clean crash towel from its hook, 
place the basin on the bench in the sunlight, and 
plunge my head into the cool water. Madame regards 
me curiously, her arms akimbo, re-hangs the towel, and 
asks : — 

" Well, what about the wine? The same?" 

"Yes ; but I will get it myself." 

The cellar is underneath the larger house. Outside 
is an old-fashioned, sloping double door. These doors 
are always open, and a cool smell of damp straw flavored 
with vinegar greets you from a leaky keg as you descend 
into its recesses. On the hard earthen floor rest eight 
or ten great casks. The walls are lined with bottles 
large and small, loaded on shelves to which little white 
cards are tacked giving the vintage and brand. In one 
corner, under the small window, you will find dozens 
of boxes of French delicacies — truffles, pease, mush- 
rooms, pat4 de foie gras, mustard, and the like, and 
behind them rows of olive oil and olives. I carefully 
draw out a bottle from the row on the last shelf nearest 
the corner, mount the steps, and place it on the table. 
Madame examines the cork, and puts down the bottle, 
remarking sententiously : — 

" Chateau Lamonte, '62 ! Monsieur has told you." 

There may be ways of dining more delicious than 



A DAY AT LAGUERRE'S 13 

out in the open air under the vines in the cool of the 
afternoon, withLucette, in her whitestof aprons, flitting 
about, and madame garnishing the dishes each in turn, 
and there may be better bottles of honest red wine to be 
found up and down this world of care than " Chateau 
Lamonte, '62," but I have not yet discovered them. 

Lucette serves the coffee in a little cup, and leaves 
the Roquefort and the cigarettes on the table just as 
the sun is sinking behind the hill skirting the railroad. 
While 1 am blowing rings through the grape leaves 
over my head a quick noise is heard across the stream. 
Lucette runs past me through the garden, picking up 
her oars as she goes. 

" Ou% mon pere. I am coming." 

It is monsieur from his day's work in the city. 

" Who is here ? " I hear him say as he mounts the 
terrace steps. " Oh, the painter — good ! " 

" Ah, mon ami. So you must see the willows once 
more. Have you not tired of them yet?" Then, seat- 
ing himself, " I hope madame has taken good care of 
you. What, the '62 ? Ah, I remember I told you." 

When it is quite dark he joins me under the leaves, 
bringing a second bottle a little better corked he 
thinks, and the talk drifts into his early life. 

"What year was that, monsieur? " I asked. 

" In 1849. I was a young fellow just grown. I had 
learned my trade in Rheims, and I had come down to 
Paris to make my bread. Two years later came the 
little affair of December 2. That ' nobody,' Louis, had 
dissolved the National Assembly and the Council of 
State, and had issued his address to the army. Paris 
was in a ferment. By the help of his soldiers and 
police he had silenced every voice in Paris except his 
own. He had suppressed all the journals, and locked 



14 F. HOPKINSON SMITH 

up everybody who had opposed him. Victor Hugo was 
in exile, Louis Blanc in London, Changarnier and 
Cavaignac in prison. At the moment I was working in 
a little shop near the Porte St. Martin decorating 
lacquerwork. We workmen all belonged to a secret 
society which met nightly in a back room over a wine- 
shop near the Rue Royale. We had but one thought 
— how to upset the little devil at the Elysee. Among 
my comrades was a big fellow from my own city, one 
Cambier. He was the leader. On the ground floor of 
the shop was built a huge oven where the lacquer was 
baked. At night this was made hot with charcoal and 
allowed to cool off in the morning ready for the finished 
work of the previous day. It was Cambier's duty to 
attend to this oven. 

" One night just after all but he and two others had 
left the shop a strange man was discovered in a closet 
where the men kept their working clothes. He was 
seized, brought to the light, and instantly recognized 
as a member of the s€cret police. 

" At daylight the next morning I was aroused from 
my bed, and, looking up, saw Chapot, an inspector of 
police, standing over me. He had known me from a 
boy, and was a friend of my father's. 

" ' Francois, there is trouble at the shop. A police 
agent has been murdered. His body was found in the 
oven. Cambier is under arrest. I know what you have 
been doing, but I also know that in this you have had 
no hand. Here are one hundred francs. Leave Paris 
in an hour.' 

" I put the money in my pocket, tied my clothes in 
a bundle, and that night was on my way to Havre, 
and the next week set sail for here." 

"And what became of Cambier?" I asked. 



•A DAY AT LAGUEEKE'S 15 

"I have never heard from that day to this, so I 
think they must have snuffed him out." 

Then he drifted into his early life here — the weary 
tramping of the streets day after day, the half-starv- 
ing result, the language and people unknown. Sud- 
denly, somewhere in the- lower part of the city, he 
espied a card tacked outside of a window bearing this 
inscription, "Decorator wanted." A man inside was 
painting one of the old-fashioned iron tea-trays com- 
mon in those days. Monsieur took off his hat, pointed 
to the card, then to himself, seized the brush, and 
before the man could protest had covered the bottom 
with morning-glories so pink and fresh that his trou- 
bles ended on the spot. The first week he earned six 
dollars ; but then this was to be paid at the end of it. 
For these six days he subsisted on one meal a day. 
This he ate at a restaurant where at night he washed 
dishes and blacked the head waiter's boots. When 
Saturday came, and the money was counted out in 
his hand, he thrust it into his pocket, left the shop, 
and sat down on a doorstep outside to think. 

"And, mon ami, what did I do first? " 

" Got something to eat ? " 

"Never. I paid for a bath, had my hair cut and 
my face shaved, bought a shirt and collar, and then 
went back to the restaurant where I had washed 
dishes the night before, and the head waiter served 
me. After that it was easy; the next week it was ten 
dollars ; then in a few years I had a place of my 
own ; then came madame and Lucette — and here we 
are." 

The twilight had faded into a velvet blue, sprinkled 
with stars. The lantern which madame had hung 
against the arbor shed a yellow light, throwing into 



16 F. HOPKINSON SMITH • 

clear relief the sharply cut features of monsieur. Up 
and down the silent stream drifted here and there 
a phantom boat, the gleam of its light following like 
a firefly. From some came no sound but the muffled 
plash of the oars. From others floated stray bits of 
song and laughter. Far up the stream I heard the 
distant whistle of the down train. 

" It is mine, monsieur. Will you cross with me, and 
bring back the boat ? " 

Monsieur unhooked the lantern, and I followed 
through the garden and down the terrace steps. 

At the water's edge was a bench holding two 
figures. 

Monsieur turned his lantern, and the light fell 
upon the face of young Francois. 

When the bow grated on the opposite bank I shook 
his hand, and said, in parting, pointing to the lovers, — 

"The same old story. Monsieur?" 

"Yes; and always new. You must come to the 
church." 

NOTES 

Harlem River : — Note that this river is in New York City, 
not in France as one might suppose from the name of the 
selection. 

Devonshire : — A very attractive county of southwestern 
England. 

filet : — A thick slice of meat or fish. 

charmant : The French word for charming. 

Roquefort : — A kind of cheese. 

Sacrd! Vous etes le diable : — Curses! You are the very 
deuce. 

passe-partouts: — Engraved ornamental borders for pic- 
tures. 

gendarme : — A policeman of France. 

Napoleon III : — Emperor of the French, 1852-1870. He was 
elected president of the Republic in 1848 ; he seized full power 



A DAY AT LAGUERRE'S 17 

in 1851 ; in 1852, he was proclaimed Emperor. He was a 
nephew of the great Napoleon. 

confrere : — A close associate. 

Garibaldi : — Giuseppe Garibaldi, an Italian patriot (1807- 
1882). 

Chianti : — A kind of Italian wine. 

Bronx : — A small river in the northern part of New York 
City. 

Restaurant Frangais : — French restaurant. 

the painter : — A rope at the bow of a boat. 

C'est merveilleux : — It 's wonderful. 

Mon Dieu : — Good heavens ! 

pat^ de fois gras : — A delicacy made of fat goose livers. 

Chateau Lamonte, '62 : — A kind of wine ; the date refers 
to the year in which it was bottled. 

Qui, mon p^re : — Yes, father. 

men ami : — My friend. 

the little affair of December 2 : — On December 2, 1851, 
Louis Napoleon overawed the French legislature and assumed 
absolute power. Just a year later he had himself proclaimed 
Emperor. 

Louis : — Napoleon III. 

Victor Hugo : — French poet and novelist (1802-1885). 

Louis Blanc: — French author and politician (1812-1882). 

Changarnier: — Pronounced s^an garnyd'j Nicholas Chan- 
gamier, a French general (1793-1877). 

Cavaignac : — Pronounced ka vay nyak' ; Louis Eugene 
Cavaignac, a French general (1803-1857). He ran for the Presi- 
dency against Louis Napoleon. 

Porte St. Martin : — The beginning of the Boulevard St. 
Martin, in Paris. 

Rue Royale: — Rue is the French word for street. 

Elysde : — A palace in Paris used as a residence by Napo- 
leon III. 

one hundred francs: — About twenty dollars. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

What does the title suggest to you ? At what point do you 
change your idea as to the location of Laguerre's ? Do you 
know of any picturesque places that are somewhat like the one 



18 F. HOPKINSON SMITH 

described here ? Could you describe one of them for the class ? 
Why do people usually not appreciate the scenery near at hand ? 
What do you think of the plan of "seeing America first"? 
What is meant here by " my traps " ? Why is it better to wait 
for Madame ? Why does Madame talk so crossly ? What sort 
of person is she ? See if you can tell accurately, from what fol- 
lows in later pages, why Monsieur left Paris so hastily. How 
does the author give you an idea of Francois Laguerre's appear- 
ance ? Why does the author stop to give us the two paragraphs 
beginning, " There is a quality," and " Then came a long 
interval " ? How does he get back to his subject ? Why does 
he not let Lucette bail the boat ? Who does bail it at last ? 
Why ? Do you think that every artist enjoys his work as the 
writer seems to enjoy his ? How does he make you feel the 
pleasure of it? Why is there more enjoyment in eating out of 
doors than in eating in the house ? Why does the author sprin- 
kle little French phrases through the piece ? Is it a good plan 
to use foreign phrases in this way ? What kind of man is Mon- 
sieur Laguerre ? Review his story carefully. Why was the 
police agent murdered ? Who killed him ? Why has Monsieur 
Laguerre never found out what became of Cambier ? 

This selection deals with a number of different subjects : 
Why does it not seem "■ choppy " ? How does the author man- 
age to link the different parts together ? How would you de- 
scribe this piece to some one who had not read it ? Mr. Smith 
is an artist who paints in water-colors : do you see how his 
painting influences his writing ? 

THEME SUBJECTS 

Madame Laguerre Getting Dinner under Difficul- 
An Old-fashioned Garden ties 

The Ferry A Scene in the Kitchen 

Sketching Washing at the Pump 

An Old Pasture The Flight of the Suspect 

The Stream Crossing the Ocean 

Good Places to Sketch Penniless 

Learning to Paint The Foreigner 

An Old Man with a History Looking for Work 

An Incident in French His- A Dinner out of Doors 

tory The French Family at Home 



A DAY AT LAGUERRE'S 19 

The Cellar What my Foreign Neighbors 

Some Pictures that I Like Eat 

A Restaurant Landscapes 

A Country Inn The Artist 

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING 

The Stream : — Plan a description of some stream that you 
know well. Imagine yourself taking a trip up the stream in a 
boat. Tell something of the weather and the time of day. Speak 
briefly of the boat and its occupants. Describe the first pictur- 
esque spot: the trees and flowers; the buildings, if there are any; 
the reflections in the water; the people that you see. Go on from 
point to point, describing the particularly interesting places. Do 
not try to do too much. Vary your account by telling of the 
boats you meet. Perhaps there will be some brief dialogues that 
you can report, or some little adventures that you can relate. 
Close your theme by telling of your arrival at your destination, 
or of your turning about to go back down the stream. 

An Old Man with a History : — Perhaps you can take this 
from real life ; or perhaps you know some interesting old man 
whose early adventures you can imagine. Tell briefly how you 
happened to know the old man. Describe him. Speak of his 
manners, his way of speaking; his character as it appeared when 
you knew him. How did you learn his story ? Imagine him re- 
lating it. Where was he when he told it ? How did he act ? Was 
he willing to tell the story, or did he have to be persuaded ? 
Tell the story simply and directly, in his words, breaking it now 
and then by a comment or a question from the listener (or 
listeners). It might be well to explain occasionally how the old 
man seemed to feel, what expressions his face assumed, and what 
gestures he made. Go on thus to the end of the story. Is it nec- 
essary for you to make any remarks at the last, after the man 
has finished ? 

A Country Inn : — See the outline for a similar subject on 
page 229. 



20 F. HOPKINSON SMITH 

COLLATERAL READINGS 

A Day at Laguerre's and Other Days . F. Hopkinson Smith 

Gondola Days « " " 

The Under Dog " « « 

Caleb West, Master Diver " " « 

Tom Grogan " " « 

The Other Fellow " " « 

Colonel Carter of Cartersville . . . . " " " 

Colonel Carter's Christmas " " ** 

The Fortunes of Oliver Horn . . . . « « " 

Forty Minutes Late " « « 

At Close Range " « '« 

A White Umbrella in Mexico . . . . " " " 

A Gentleman Vagabond " " " 

(Note especially in this, Along the Bronx.^ 

Fisherman's Luck Henry van Dyke 

A Lazy Idle Brook (in Fisherman's Luck) . " " 

Little Rivers " " 

The Friendly Road David Grayson 

Adventures in Contentment " " 

For information concerning Mr. Smith, consult : — 
A History of Southern Literature, p. 375 . . Carl Holliday 
American Authors and their Homes, pp. 187-194 F. W. Halsey 

Bookman, 17 : 16 (Portrait) ; 24 : 9, September, 1906 (Por- 
trait); 28: 9, September, 1908 (Portrait). Arena, 38: 678, 
December, 1907. Outlook, 93: 689, November 27, 1909. 
Bookbuyer, 25 : 17-20, August, 1902. 



QUITE SO 

'^ THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 

(In Marjorie Daw, and Other Stories) 
I 

Of course that was not his name. Even in the State 
of Maine, where it is still a custom to maim a child 
for life by christening him Arioch or Shadrach or 
Ephraim, nobody would dream of calling a boy " Quite 
So." It was merely a nickname which we gave him in 
camp ; but it stuck to him with such bur-like tenacity, 
and is so inseparable from my memory of him, that I 
do not think I could write definitely of John Bladburn 
if I were to call him anything but " Quite So." 

It was one night shortly after the first battle of Bull 
Run. The Army of the Potomac, shattered, stunned, 
and forlorn, was back in its old quarters behind the 
earth-works. The melancholy line of ambulances bear- 
ing our wounded to Washington was not done creeping 
over Long Bridge ; the blue smocks and the gray still 
lay in windrows on the field of Manassas; and the 
gloom that weighed down our hearts was like the fog 
that stretched along the bosom of the Potomac, and 
infolded the valley of the Shenandoah. A drizzling 
rain had set in at twilight, and, growing bolder with 
the darkness, was beating a dismal tattoo on the ^ent, 
— the tent of Mess 6, Company A, -th Regiment, N. Y. 
Volunteers. Our mess, consisting originally of eight 
men, was reduced to four. Little Billy, as one of the 
boys grimly remarked, had concluded to remain at 



22 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 

Manassas ; Corporal Steele we had to leave at Fairfax 
Court-House, shot through the hip ; Hunter and Suy- 
dam we had said good-by to that afternoon. "Tell 
Johnny Reb," says Hunter, lifting up the leather side- 
piece of the ambulance, " that I '11 be back again as 
soon as I get a new leg." But Suydam said nothing ; 
he only unclosed his eyes languidly and smiled fare- 
well to us. 

The four of us who were left alive and unhurt that 
shameful July day sat gloomily smoking our brier- 
wood pipes, thinking our thoughts, and listening to the 
rain pattering against the canvas. That, and the occa- 
sional whine of a hungry cur, foraging on the outskirts 
of the camp for a stray bone, alone broke the silence, 
save when a vicious drop of rain detached itself medi- 
tatively from the ridge-pole of the tent, and fell upon 
the wick of our tallow candle, making it " cuss," as 
Ned Strong described it. The candle was in the midst 
of one of its most profane fits when Blakely, knocking 
the ashes from his pipe and addressing no one in par- 
ticular, but giving breath, unconsciously as it were, 
to the result of his cogitations, observed that " it was 
considerable of a fizzle." 

" The ' on to Richmond ' business ? " 

" Yes." 

" I wonder what they '11 do about it over yonder," 
said Curtis, pointing over his right shoulder. By 
"over yonder" he meant the North in general and 
Massachusetts especially. Curtis was a Boston boy, 
and his sense of locality was so strong that, during all 
his wanderings in Virginia, I do not believe there was 
a moment, day or night, when he could not have made 
a bee-line for Faneuil Hall. 

"Do about it?" cried Strong. "They'll make 



QUITE SO 23 

about two hundred thousand blue flannel trousers 
and send thera along, each pair with a man in it, — 
all the short men in the long trousers, and all the tall 
men in the short ones," he added, ruefully contem- 
plating his own leg-gear, which scarcely reached to his 
ankles. 

" That 's so," said Blakely. "Just now, when I was 
tackling the commissary for an extra candle, I saw a 
crowd of new fellows drawing blankets." 

" I say there, drop that ! " cried Strong. " All right, 
sir, did n't know it was you," he added hastily, seeing 
it was Lieutenant Haines who had thrown back the 
flap of the tent, and let in a gust of wind and rain 
that threatened the most serious bronchial conse- 
quences to our discontented tallow dip. 

"You 're to bunk in here," said the lieutenant, 
speaking to some one outside. The some one stepped 
in, and Haines vanished in the darkness. 

When Strong had succeeded in restoring the can- 
dle to consciousness, the light fell upon a tall, shy- 
looking man of about thirty-five, with long, hay-col- 
ored beard and mustache, upon which the rain-drops 
stood in clusters, like the night-dew on patches of 
cobweb in a meadow. It was an honest face, with 
unworldly sort of blue eyes, that looked out from 
under the broad visor of the infantry cap. With a 
deferential glance towards us, the new-comer un- 
strapped his knapsack, spread his blanket over it, 
and sat down unobtrusively. 

" Rather damp night out," remarked Blakely, whose 
strong hand was supposed to be conversation. 

" Quite so," replied the stranger, not curtly, but 
pleasantly, and with an air as if he had said all there 
was to be said about it. 



24 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 

" Come from the North recently ? " inquired Blakely, 
after a pause. 

"Yes." 

" From any place in particular ?" 

" Maine." 

" People considerably stirred up down there ? " 
continued Blakely, determined not to give up. 

" Quite so." 

Blakely threw a puzzled look over the tent, and 
seeing Ned Strong on the broad grin, frowned severely. 
Strong instantly assumed an abstracted air, and be- 
gan humming softly, 

" I wish I was in Dixie." 

" The State of Maine," observed Blakely, with a 
certain defiance of manner not at all necessary in 
discussing a geographical question, "is a pleasant 
State." 

" In summer," suggested the stranger. 

"In summer, I mean," returned Blakely with ani- 
mation, thinking he had broken the ice. " Cold as 
blazes in winter, though, — is n't it ? " 

The new recruit merely nodded. 

Blakely eyed the man homicidally for a moment, and 
then, smiling one of those smiles of simulated gayety 
which the novelists inform us are more tragic than 
tears, turned upon him with withering irony. 

" Trust you left the old folks pretty comfortable ? " 

"Dead." 

" The old folks dead ! " 

" Quite so." 

Blakely made a sudden dive for his blanket, tucked 
it around him with painful precision, and was heard 
no more. 



QUITE SO 25 

Just then the bugle sounded " lights out," — bugle 
answering bugle in far-off camps. When our not 
elaborate night-toilets were complete, Strong threw 
somebody else's old boot at the candle with infallible 
aim, and darkness took possession of the tent. Ned, 
who lay on my left, presently reached over to me, and 
whispered, " I say, our friend ' quite so ' is a garru- 
lous old boy ! He '11 talk himself to death some of 
these odd times, if he is n't careful. How he did 
run on ! " 

The next morning, when I opened my eyes, the 
new member of Mess 6 was sitting on his knapsack, 
combing his blond beard with a horn comb. He 
nodded pleasantly to me, and to each of the boys as 
they woke up, one by one. Blakely did not appear 
disposed to renew the animated conversation of the 
previous night ; but while he was gone to make a 
requisition for what was in pure sarcasm called coffee, 
Curtis ventured to ask the man his name. 

" Bladburn, John," was the reply. 

" That 's rather an unwieldy name for everyday 
use," put in Strong. "If it would n't hurt your feel- 
ings, I 'd like to call you Quite So, — for short. Don't 
say no, if you don't like it. Is it agreeable ? " 

Bladburn gave a little laugh, all to himself, seem- 
ingly, and was about to say, "Quite so," when he 
caught at the words, blushed like a girl, and nodded 
a sunny assent to Strong. From that day until the 
end, the sobriquet clung to him. 

The disaster at Bull Run was followed, as the 
reader knows, by a long period of masterly inactivity, 
so far as the Army of the Potomac was concerned. 
McDowell, a good soldier but unlucky, retired to Ar- 
lington Heights, and McClellan, who had distinguished 



26 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 

himself in Western Virginia, took command of the 
forces in front of Washington, and bent his energies 
to reorganizing the demoralized troops. It was a 
dreary time to the people of the North, who looked 
fatuously from week to week for "the fall of Rich- 
mond "; and it was a dreary time to the denizens of 
that vast city of tents and forts which stretched in a 
semicircle before the beleaguered Capitol, — so tedi- 
ous and soul-wearing a time that the hardships of 
forced marches and the horrors of battle became de- 
sirable things to them. 

Roll-call morning and evening, guard-duty, dress- 
parades, an occasional reconnoissance, dominoes, wrest- 
ling-matches, and such rude games as could be carried 
on in camp made up the sum of our lives. The arrival 
of the mail with letters and papers from home was 
the event of the day. We noticed that Bladburn 
neither wrote nor received any letters. When the 
rest of the boys were scribbling away for dear life, 
with drumheads and knapsacks and cracker-boxes 
for writing-desks, he would sit serenely smoking his 
pipe, but looking out on us through rings of smoke 
with a face expressive of the tenderest interest. 

"Look here. Quite So," Strong would say, "the 
mail-bag closes in half an hour. Ain't you going to 
write?" 

" I believe not to-day," Bladburn would reply, as 
if he had written yesterday, or would write to-mor- 
row : but he never wrote. 

He had become a great favorite with us, and with 
all the officers of the regiment. He talked less than 
any man I ever knew, but there was nothing sinister 
or sullen in his reticence. It was sunshine, — warmth 
and brightness, but no voice. Unassuming and mod- 



QUITE SO 27 

est to the verge of shyness, he impressed every one 
as a man of singular pluck and nerve. 

" Do you know," said Curtis to me one day, " that 
that fellow Quite So is clear grit, and when we come 
to close quarters with our Palmetto brethren over 
yonder, he'll do something devilish?" 

" What makes you think so ? " 

" Well, nothing quite explainable ; the exasperating 
coolness of the man, as much as anything. This morn- 
ing the boys were teasing Muffin Fan " [a small mu- 
latto girl who used to bring muffins into camp three 
times a week, — at the peril of her life !] " and Jemmy 
Blunt of Company K — you know him — was rather 
rough on the girl, when Quite So, who had been read- 
ing under a tree, shut one finger in his book, walked 
over to where the boys were skylarking, and with the 
smile of a juvenile angel on his face lifted Jemmy out 
of that and set him down gently in front of his own 
tent. There Blunt sat speechless, staring at Quite So, 
who was back again under the tree, pegging away at 
his little Latin grammar." 

That Latin grammar ! He always had it about him, 
reading it or turning over its dog's-eared pages at odd 
intervals and in out-of-the-way places. Half a dozen 
times a day he would draw it out from the bosom of 
his blouse, which had taken the shape of the book just 
over the left breast, look at it as if to assure himself 
it was all right, and then put the thing back. At night 
the volume lay beneath his pillow. The first thing in 
the morning, before he was well awake, his hand 
would go groping instinctively under his knapsack in 
search of it. 

A devastating curiosity seized upon us boys con- 
cerning that Latin grammar, for we had discovered 



28 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 

the nature of the book. Strong wanted to steal it one 
night, but concluded not to. " In the first place," re- 
flected Strong, " I have n't the heart to do it, and in 
the next place I have n't the moral courage. Quite So 
would placidly break every bone in my body." And I 
believe Strong was not far out of the way. 

Sometimes I was vexed with myself for allowing 
this tall, simple-hearted country fellow to puzzle me 
so much. And yet, was he a simple-hearted country 
fellow? City bred he certainly was not; but his man- 
ner, in spite of his awkwardness, had an indescribable 
air of refinement. Now and then, too, he dropped a 
word or a phrase that showed his familiarity with un- 
expected lines of reading. " The other day," said Cur- 
tis, with the slightest elevation of eyebrow, " he had 
the cheek to correct my Latin for me." In short, Quite 
So was a daily problem to the members of Mess 6. 
Whenever he was absent, and Blakely and Curtis and 
Strong and I got together in the tent, we discussed 
him, evolving various theories to explain why he never 
wrote to anybody and why nobody ever wrote to him. 
Had the man committed some terrible crime, and fled 
to the army to hide his guilt ? Blakely suggested that 
he must have murdered " the old folks." What did he 
mean by eternally conning that tattered Latin gram- 
mar? And was his name Bladburn, anyhow? Even 
his imperturbable amiability became suspicious. And 
then his frightful reticence ! If he was the victim of 
any deep grief or crushing calamity, why did n't he 
seem unhappy? What business had he to be cheer- 
ful? 

" It 's my opinion," said Strong, " that he 's a rival 
Wandering Jew ; the original Jacobs, you know, was 
a dark fellow." 



QUITE SO 29 

Blakely inferred from something Bladburn had 
said, or something he had not said, — which was more 
likely, — that he had been a schoolmaster at some 
period of his life. 

" Schoolmaster be hanged ! " was Strong's comment. 
" Can you fancy a schoolmaster going about conjugat- 
ing baby verbs out of a dratted little spelling-book ? 
No, Quite So has evidently been a — a — Blest if I 
can imagine what he 's been ! " 

Whatever John Bladburn had been, he was a lonely 
man. Whenever I want a type of perfect human iso- 
lation, I shall think of him, as he was in those days, 
moving remote, self-contained, and alone in the midst 
of two hundred thousand men. 

' II 

The Indian summer, with its infinite beauty and 
tenderness, came like a reproach that year to Virginia. 
The foliage, touched here and there with prismatic 
tints, drooped motionless in the golden haze. The del- 
icate Virginia creeper was almost minded to put forth 
its scarlet buds again. No wonder the lovely phantom 
— this dusky Southern sister of the pale Northern 
June — lingered not long with us, but, filling the once 
peaceful glens and valleys with her pathos, stole away 
rebukefuUy before the savage enginery of man. 

The preparations that had been going on for months 
in arsenals and foundries at the North were nearly 
completed. For weeks past the air had been filled with 
rumors of an advance ; but the rumor of to-day refuted 
the rumor of yesterday, and the Grand Army did not 
move. Heintzelman's corps was constantly folding its 
tents, like the Arabs," and as silently stealing away ; 
but somehow it was always in the same place the next 



30 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 

morning. One day, at length, orders came down for 
our brigade to move. 

" We 're going to Richmond, boys ! " shouted Strong, 
thrusting his head in at the tent ; and we all cheered 
and waved our caps like mad. You see, Big Bethel 
and Bull Run and Ball's Bluff (the Bloody B's, as 
we used to call them,) had n't taught us any better 
sense. 

Rising abruptly from the plateau, to the left of our 
encampment, was a tall hill covered with a stunted 
growth of red-oak, persimmon, and chestnut. The 
night before we struck tents I climbed up to the crest 
to take a parting look at a spectacle which custom 
had not been able to rob of its enchantment. There, 
at my feet, and extending miles and miles away, lay 
the canjps of the Grand Army, with its camp-fires 
reflected luridly against the sky. Thousands of lights 
were twinkling in every direction, some nestling in 
the valley, some like fire-flies beating their wings and 
palpitating among the trees, and others stretching in 
parallel lines and curves, like the street-lamps of a 
city. Somewhere, far off, a band was playing, at inter- 
vals it seemed ; and now and then, nearer to, a silvery 
strain from a bugle shot sharply up through the night, 
and seemed to lose itself like a rocket among the stars, 
— the patient, untroubled stars. Suddenly a hand was 
laid upon my arm. 

" I 'd like to say a word to you," said Bladburn. 

With a little start of surprise, I made room for him 
on the fallen tree where I was seated. 

" I may n't get another chance," he said. " You and 
the boys have been very kind to me, kinder than I de- 
serve ; but sometimes I 've fancied that my not saying 
anything about myself had given you the idea that all 



QUITE SO 31 

was not right in my past. I want to say that I came 
down to Virginia with a clean record." 

" We never really doubted it, Bladburn." 

" If I did n't write home," he continued, " it was be- 
cause I had n't any home, neither kith nor kin. When 
I said the old folks were dead, I said it. Am I boring 
you ? If I thought I was — " 

" No, Bladburn. I have often wanted you to talk to 
me about yourself, not from idle curiosity, I trust, but 
because I liked you that rainy night when you came 
to camp, and have gone on liking you ever since. This 
is n't too much to say, when Heaven only knows how 
soon I may be past saying it or you listening to it." 

"That 's it," said Bladburn, hurriedly, " that 's why 
I want to talk with you. I 've a fancy that I shan't 
come out of our first battle." 

The words gave me a queer start, for I had been 
trying several days to throw off a similar presentiment 
concerning him, — a foolish presentiment that grew 
out of a dream. 

" In case anything of that kind turns up," he con- 
tinued, " I 'd like you to have my Latin grammar here, 
— you 've seen me reading it. You might stick it away 
in a bookcase, for the sake of old times. It goes against 
me to think of it falling into rough hands or being 
kicked about camp and trampled under foot." 

He was drumming softly with his fingers on the 
volume in the bosom of his blouse, 

" I did n't intend to speak of this to a living soul," 
he went on, motioning me not to answer him ; " but 
something took hold of me to-night and made me fol- 
low you up here. Perhaps, if I told you all, you would 
be the more willing to look after the little book in case 
it goes ill with me. When the war broke out I was 



32 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 

teaching school down in Maine, in the same village 
where my father was schoolmaster before me. The old 
man when he died left me quite alone. I lived pretty 
much by myself, having no interests outside of the 
district school, which seemed in a manner my personal 
property. Eight years ago last spring a new pupil was 
brought to the school, a slight slip of a girl, with a sad 
kind of face and quiet ways. Perhaps it was because 
she was n't very strong, and perhaps because she was n't 
used over well by those who had charge of her, or per- 
haps it was because my life was lonely, that my heart 
warmed to the child. It all seems like a dream now, 
since that April morning when little Mary stood in 
front of my desk with her pretty eyes looking down 
bashfully and her soft hair falling over her face. One 
day I look up, and six years have gone by, — as they 
go by in dreams, — and among the scholars is a tall 
girl of sixteen, with serious, womanly eyes which I 
cannot trust myself to look upon. The old life has 
come to an end. The child has become a woman and 
can teach the master now. So help me Heaven, I 
did n't know that I loved her until that day ! 

" Long after the children had gone home I sat in the 
schoolroom with my face resting on my hands. There 
was her desk, the afternoon shadows falling across it. 
It never looked empty and cheerless before. I went 
and stood by the low chair, as I had stood hundreds 
of times. On the desk was a pile of books, ready to be 
taken away, and among the rest a small Latin gram- 
mar which we had studied together. What little de- 
spairs and triumphs and happy hours were associated 
with it ! I took it up curiously, as if it were some gentle 
dead thing, and turned over the pages, and could 
hardly see them. Turning the pages, idly so, I came 



QUITE SO 33 

to a leaf on which something was written with ink, in 
the familiar girlish hand. It was only the words ' Dear 
John,' through which she had drawn two hasty pencil 
lines — I wish she had n't drawn those lines ! " added 
Bladburn, under his breath. 

He was silent for a minute or two, looking off to- 
wards the camps, where the lights were fading out one 
by one. 

" I had no right to go and love Mary. I was twice 
her age, an awkward, unsocial man, that would have 
blighted her youth. I was as wrong as wrong can be. 
But I never meant to tell her. I locked the grammar 
in my desk and the secret in my heart for a year. I 
could n't bear to meet her in the village, and kept 
away from every place where she was likely to be. 
Then she came to me, and sat down at my feet peni- 
tently, just as she used to do when she was a child, 
and asked what she had done to anger me ; and then, 
Heaven forgive me ! I told her all, and asked her if 
she could say with her lips the words she had written, 
and she nestled in my arms all a-trembling like a bird, 
and said them over and over again. 

"When Mary's family heard of our engagement, 
there was trouble. They looked higher for Mary than 
a middle-aged schoolmaster. No blame to them. They 
forbade me the house, her uncles ; but we met in the 
village and at the neighbors' houses, and I was happy, 
knowing she loved me. Matters were in this state when 
the war came on. I had a strong call to look after the 
old flag, and I hung my head that day when the com- 
pany raised in our village marched by the schoolhouse 
to the railroad station ; but I could n't tear myself 
away. About this time the minister's son, who had been 
away to college, came to the village. He met Mary here 



34 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 

and there, and they became great friends. He was a 
likely fellow, near her own age, and it was natural 
they should like one another. Sometimes I winced at 
seeino^ him made free of the home from which I was 
shut out ; then I would open the grammar at the leaf 
where ' Dear John ' was written up in the corner, and 
my trouble was gone. Mary was sorrowful and pale 
these days, and I think her people were worrying 
her. 

" It was one evening two or three days before we 
got the news of Bull Run. I had gone down to the 
burying-ground to trim the spruce hedge set round 
the old man's lot, and was just stepping into the en- 
closure, when I heard voices from the opposite side. 
One was Mary's, and the other I knew to be young 
Marston's, the minister's son. I did n't mean to listen, 
but what Mary was saying struck me dumb. We must 
never meet again^ she was saying in a wild way. We 
must say good-hy here, forever, — good-hy, good-hy ! 
And I could hear her sobbing. Then, presently, she 
said, hurriedly, No, no ; my hand, not my lips ! Then 
it seemed he kissed her hands, and the two parted, one 
going towards the parsonage, and the other out by the 
gate near where I stood. 

" I don't know how long I stood there, but the night- 
dews had wet me to the bone when I stole out of the 
graveyard and across the road to the schoolhouse. I 
unlocked the door, and took the Latin grammar from 
the desk and hid it in my bosom. There was not a 
sound or a light anywhere as I walked out of the vil- 
lage. And now," said Bladburn, rising suddenly from 
the tree-trunk, " if the little book ever falls in your 
way, won't you see that it comes to no harm, for my 
sake, and for the sake of the little woman who was 



QUITE SO 35 

true to me and did n't love me ? Wherever she is to- 
night, God bless her ! " 

As we descended to camp with our arras resting on 
each other's shoulder, the watch-fires were burning low 
in the valleys and along the hillsides, and as far as 
the eye could reach, the silent tents lay bleaching in 
the moonlight. 

Ill 

We imagined that the throwing forward of our bri- 
gade was the initial movement of a general advance of 
the army ; but that, as the reader will remember, did 
not take place until the following March. The Con- 
federates had fallen back to Centreville without firing 
a shot, and the National troops were in possession of 
Lewinsville, Vienna, and Fairfax Court-House. Our 
new position was nearly identical with that which we 
had occupied on the night previous to the battle of 
Bull Run, — on the old turnpike road to Manassas, 
where the enemy was supposed to be in great force. 
With a field-glass we could see the Rebel pickets 
moving in a belt of woodland on our right, and morn- 
ing and evening we heard the spiteful roll of their 
snare-drums. 

Those pickets soon became a nuisance to us. Hardly 
a night passed but they fired upon our outposts, so far 
with no harmful result ; but after a while it grew to 
be a serious matter. The Rebels would crawl out on 
all-fours from the wood into a field covered with un- 
derbrush, and lie there in the dark for hours, waiting 
for a shot. Then our men took to the rifle-pits, — pits 
ten or twelve feet long by four or five feet deep, with 
the loose earth banked up a few inches high on the 
exposed sides. All the pits bore names, more or less fe- 



36 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 

licitous, by which they were known to their transient 
tenants. One was called " The Pepper-Box," another 
" Uncle Sam's Well," another " The Reb-Trap," and 
another, I am constrained to say, was named after a 
not to be mentioned tropical locality. Though this rude 
sort of nomenclature predominated, there was no lack 
of softer titles, such as " Fortress Matilda " and 
" Castle Mary," and one had, though unintentionally, 
a literary flavor to it, " Blair's Grave," which was not 
popularly considered as reflecting unpleasantly on 
Nat Blair, who had assisted in making the excavation. 

Some of the regiment had discovered a field of late 
corn in the neighborhood, and used to boil a few ears 
every day, while it lasted, for the boys detailed on the 
night-picket. The corn-cobs were always scrupulously 
preserved and mounted on the parapets of the pits. 
Whenever a Rebel shot carried away one of these 
harhette guns, there was swearing in that particular 
trench. Strong, who was very sensitive to this kind of 
disaster, was complaining bitterly one morning, be- 
cause he had lost three " pieces " the night before. 

" There's Quite So, now," said Strong, " when a 
Minie-ball comes ping ! and knocks one of his guns 
to flinders, he merely smiles, and does n't at all see the 
degradation of the thing." 

Poor Bladburn ! As I watched him day by day go- 
ing about his duties, in his shy, cheery way, with a 
smile for every one and not an extra word for any- 
body, it was hard to believe he was the same man who, 
that night before we broke camp by the Potomac, had 
poured out to me the story of his love and sorrow in 
words that burned in my memory. 

While Strong was speaking, Blakely lifted aside 
the flap of the tent and looked in on us. 



QUITE SO 37 

" Boys, Quite So was hurt last night," he said, with 
a white tremor to his lip. 

"What!" 

" Shot on picket." 

"Why, he was in the pit next to mine," cried 
Strong. 

"Badly hurt?" 

" Badly hurt." 

I knew he was ; I need not have asked the ques- 
tion. He never meant to go back to New England ! 

Bladburn was lying on the stretcher in the hospital- 
tent. The surgeon had knelt down by him, and was 
carefully cutting away the bosom of his blouse. The 
Latin grammar, stained and torn, slipped, and fell to 
the floor. Bladburn gave me a quick glance. I picked 
up the book, and as I placed it in his hand, the icy 
fingers closed softly over mine. He was sinking fast. 
In a few minutes the surgeon finished his examina- 
tion. When he rose to his feet there were tears on the 
weather-beaten cheeks. He was a rough outside, but 
a tender heart. 

" My poor lad," he blurted out, " it 's no use. If 
you 've anything to say, say it now, for you 've nearly 
done with this world." 

Then Bladburn lifted his eyes slowly to the surgeon, 
and the old smile flitted over his face as he mur- 
mured, — 

" Quite so." 

NOTES 

the first battle of Bull Run: — Fought July 21, 1861; 
known in the South as Manassas. 

Long Bridge : — A bridge over which the Union soldiers 
crossed in fleeing to Washington after the battle of Bull Run. 



38 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 

Shenandoah: — A river and a valley in Virginia — the 
scene of many events in the Civil War. 

Fairfax Court House: — Near Manassas Junction. 

On to Richmond: — In 1861 the newspapers of the North 
■were violently demanding an attack on Richmond. 

Faneuil Hall : — An historic hall in Boston, in which im- 
portant meetings were held before the Revolution. 

McDo'well : — Irving McDowell, who commanded the Union 
troops at Bull Run. 

MoClellan: — George B. McClellan, commander of the 
Army of the Potomac. 

"Wandering Jevr : — A legendary person said to have been 
condemned to wander over the earth, undying, till the Day of 
Judgment. The legend is probably founded on a passage in the 
Bible— John 21: 20-23. 

folding its tents: — A quotation from The Day is Done, by 
Longfellow. The lines are : — 

And the night shall be filled with music, 

And the cares, that infest the day, 
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, 

And as silently steal away. 

Big Bethel: — The Union troops were defeated here on 
June 10, 1861. 

Ball's Bluff: — A place on the Potomac where the Union 
soldiers were beaten, October 21, 1861. 

Centreville: — A small town, the Union base in the first 
Battle of Bull Run. 

Lewinsville: — A small town, north of Centreville. 

Vienna : — A village in the Bull Run district. 

Blair's Grave : — Robert Blair, a Scotch writer, published 
(1743) a poem in blank verse called "The Grave." 

barbette guns: — Guns elevated to fire over the top of a 
turret or parapet. 

minie-ball: — A conical ball plugged with iron, named after 
its inventor, Captain Minid, of France. 

QUESTIONS FOR STUDY 

Read the piece through without stopping, so that you can get 
the story. Then go back to the beginning and study with the 
help of the following questions: — 



QUITE SO 39 

Compare the first sentence with the first sentence of Tennes- 
see's Partner. What do you think of the method ? What is the 
use of the first paragraph in Quite So ? Why the long paragraph 
giving the setting ? Is this a good method in writing a story ? 
What had become of " Little Billy " ? Who was " Johnny Reb "? 
What do you think of bringing in humorous totiches when one 
is dealing with things so serious as war and battles ? What does 
" Drop that ! " refer to ? Why does Strong change his tone ? 
Note what details the author has selected iu order to give a clear 
picture of " Quite So " in a few words. How does the conversa- 
tion reveal the stranger's character? What is shown by the fact 
that " Quite So " does not write any letters ? What is the pur- 
pose of the episode of " Muffin Fan " ? What devices does the 
author use, in order to bring out the mystery and the loneliness 
of " Quite So " ? Note how the author emphasizes the passage 
of time. Why does Bladburn finally tell his story ? How does it 
reveal his character? Was Mary right in what she did ? Why 
are some sentences in the text printed in italics ? Was Blad- 
burn right in leaving his home village without explanation? 
Whj' did he do so ? What do you get from the sentence, "He 
never meant to go back to New England " ? What is the im- 
pression made by the last sentence ? Do you like the story ? 



THEME SUBJECTS 

A Mysterious Person A Sham Battle 

The New Girl at School A Visit to an Old Battlefield 

The Schoolmaster's Romance On Picket Duty 

A Sudden Departure A Daughter of the Confederacy 

A Camp Scene " Stonewall " Jackson 

The G. A. R. on Memorial Day Modern Ways of Preventing 

The Militia in our Town War 

An Old Soldier The Soldiers' Home 

A Story of the Civil War An Escape from a Military 

Some Relics of the Civil War Prison 

Watching the Cadets Drill The Women's Relief Corps 

My Uncle's Experiences in the Women in the Civil War 
War 



40 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 



SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING 

An Old Soldier: — Tell how you happen to know this old 
soldier. Where does he live? Do you see him often? What is he 
doing when you see him? Describe him as vividly as you can: 

— his general appearance; his clothes; his way of walking. 
Speak particularly of his face and its expression. If possible, let 
us hear him talk. Perhaps you can tell some of his war stories 

— in his own words. 

A Mysterious Person: — Imagine a mysterious person 
appearing in a little town where everybody knows everybody 
else. Tell how he (or she) arrives. How does he look? What 
does he do? Explain clearly why he is particularly hard to ac- 
count for. What do people say about him? Try to make each 
person's remarks fit his individual character. How do people try 
to find out about the stranger? Does he notice their curiosity? 
Do they ask him questions? If so, give some bits of their con- 
versations with him. You might go on and make a story of some 
length out of this. Show whether the stranger really has any 
reason for concealing his identity. Does he get into any trouble? 
Does an accident reveal who he is and why he is in the town? 
Does some one find out by spying upon him? Or does he tell all 
about himself, when the right time comes? 

Perhaps you can put the story into the form of a series of 
brief conversations about the stranger or with him. 

An Incident of the Civil War: — Select some historical 
incident, or one that you have heard from an old soldier, and 
tell it simply and vividly in your own words. 



COLLATERAL READINGS 

The Story of a Bad Boy Thomas Bailey Aldrich 

Marjorie Daw and Other People . . " , " " 

The Stillwater Tragedy " " " 

Prudence Palfrey « « " 

From Ponkapog to Pesth " " " 

The Queen of Sheba " " " 

A Sea Turn and Other Matters ... " " " 



QUITE SO 41 

For Bravery on the Field of Battle (in 

2'wo Bites at a Cherry) . . . . . Thomas Bailey Aldrich 
The Return of a Private (in Main- 
Travelled Roads) Hamlin Garland 

On the Eve of the Fourth Harold Frederic 

Marse Chan Thomas Nelson Page 

MehLady " " " 

The Burial of the Guns " " " 

Red Rock " " " 

The Long Roll Mary Johnston 

Cease Firing " " 

The Crisis Winston Churchill 

Where the Battle was Fought . . . Mary N. Murfree 

The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come John Fox, Jr. 

Hospital Sketches Louisa M. Alcott 

A Blockaded Family P. A. Hague 

He Knew Lincoln ^ Ida Tarbell 

The Perfect Tribute 2 M. R. S. Andrews 

The Toy Shop ^ M. S. Gerry 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich Ferris Greenslet 

Park Street Papers, pp. 143-70 . . . Bliss Perry 
American Writers of To-day, pp. 104- 

23 H. C. Vedder 

American Authors and their Homes, 

pp. 89-98 F. W. Halsey 

American Authors at Home, pp. 3-16 . J. L. and J. B. Gilder 
Literary Pilgrimages in New England, 

pp. 89-97 E. M. Bacon 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (poem) . . . Henry van Dyke 

For biographies and criticisms of Thomas B. Aldrich, see also: 
Outlook, 86: 922, August 24, 1907; 84: 735, November 24, 
1906 ; 85 : 737, March 30, 1907. Bookman, 24 : 317, Decem- 
ber, 1906 (Portrait); also 25: 218 (Portrait). Current Liter- 
ature, 42: 49, January, 1907 (Portrait). Chautauquau, 65 : 168, 
January, 1912. 

^ See also American Magazine, 63 : 339. 

2 See Scri'bner^s Magazine, 40 : 17. 

2 See Harper's Monthly Magazine, 116 : 3. 



PAN IN WALL STREET 

A.D. 1867 
EDMUND CLAEElSrCE STEDMAN 

Just where the Treasury's marble front 

Looks over Wall Street's mingled nations ; 
Where Jews and Gentiles most are wont 

To throng for trade and last quotations ; 
Where, hour by hour, the rates of gold 

Outrival, in the ears of people, 
The quarter-chimes, serenely tolled 

From Trinity's undaunted steeple, — 

Even there I heard a strange, wild strain 

Sound high above the modern clamor, 
Above the cries of greed and gain, 

The curbstone war, the auction's hammer ; 
And swift, on Music's misty ways, 

It led, from all this strife for millions, 
To ancient, sweet-do-nothing days 

Among the kirtle-robed Sicilians. 

And as it stilled the multitude, 

And yet more joyous rose, and shriller, 
I saw the minstrel where he stood 

At ease against a Doric pillar : 
One hand a droning organ played. 

The other held a Pan's-pipe (fashioned 
Like those of old) to lips that made 

The reeds give out that strain impassioned. 



PAN IN WALL STREET 43 

'T was Pan himself had wandered here 

A-stroUing through this sordid city, 
And piping to the civic ear 

The prelude of some pastoral ditty ! 
The demigod had crossed the seas, — 

From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr. 
And Syracusan times, — to these 

Far shores and twenty centuries later. 

A ragged cap was on his head ; 

But — hidden thus — there was no doubting 
That, all with crispy locks o'erspread. 

His gnarled horns were somewhere sprouting ; 
His club-feet, cased in rusty shoes. 

Were crossed, as on some frieze you see them, 
And trousers, patched of divers hues. 

Concealed his crooked shanks beneath them. 

He filled the quivering reeds with sound. 

And o'er his mouth their changes shifted. 
And with his goat's-eyes looked around 

Where'er the passing current drifted ; 
And soon, as on Trinacrian hills 

The nymphs and herdsmen ran to hear him. 
Even now the tradesmen from their tills, 

With clerks and porters, crowded near him. 

The bulls and bears together drew 

From Jauncey Court and New Street Alley, 
As erst, if pastorals be true. 

Came beasts from every wooded valley ; 
And random passers stayed to list, — 

A boxer JEgon, rough and merry, 
A Broadway Daphnis, on his tryst 

With Nais at the Brooklyn Ferry. 



44 EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 

A one-eyed Cyclops halted long 

In tattered cloak of army pattern, 
And Galatea joined the throng, — 

A blowsy apple- vending slattern ; 
While old Silenus staggered out 

From some new-fangled lunch-house handy, 
And bade the piper, with a shout. 

To strike up Yankee Doodle Dandy ! 

A newsboy and a peanut-girl 

Like little Fauns began to caper ; 
His hair was all in tangled curl. 

Her tawny legs were bare and taper ; 
And still the gathering larger grew, 

And gave its pence and crowded nigher, 
While aye the shepherd-minstrel blew 

His pipe, and struck the gamut higher. 

O heart of Nature, beating still 

With throbs her vernal passion taught her, - 
Even here, as on the vine-clad hill. 

Or by the Arethusan water ! 
New forms may fold the speech, new lands 

Arise within these ocean-portals, 
But Music waves eternal wands, — 

Enchantress of the souls of mortals ! 

So thought I, — but among us trod 

A man in blue, with legal baton, 
And scoffed the vagrant demigod, 

And pushed him from the step I sat on. 
Doubting I mused upon the cry, 

" Great Pan is dead I " — and all the people 
Went on their ways : — and clear and high 

The quarter sounded from the steeple. 



PAN IN WALL STREET 45 



NOTES 



Wall Street: — An old street in New York faced by the 
Stock Exchange and the offices of the wealthiest bankers and 
brokers. 

the Treasury : — The Sub-Treasury Building. 

last quotations : — The latest information on stock values 
given out before the Stock Exchange closes. 

Trinity : — The famous old church that stands at the head 
of Wall Street. 

curbstone war : — The clamorous quoting, auctioning, and 
bidding of stock out on the street curb, where the "curb 
brokers" — brokers who do not have seats on the Stock Ex- 
change — do business. 

sweet-do-nothing : — A translation of an Italian expres- 
sion, dolcefar niente. 

Sicilians : — Theocritus (3rd century before Christ), the 
Greek pastoral poet, wrote of the happy life of the shepherds 
and shepherdesses in Sicily. 

Doric pillar : — A heavy marble pillar, such as was used 
in thei'-architecture of the Dorians in Greece. 

Pan's pipe : — Pan was the Greek god of shepherds, and 
patron of fishing and hunting. He is represented as having the 
head and body of a man, with the legs, horns, and tail of a goat. 
It was said that he invented the shepherd's pipe or flute, which 
he made from reeds plucked on the bank of a stream. 

pastoral ditty : — A poem about shepherds and the happy 
outdoor life. The word pastoral comes from the ha.tin pastor, 
shepherd. 

Syracusan times : — Syracuse was an important city in 
Sicily. See the note on Sicilians, above. 

Trinacrian hills : — Trinacria is an old name for Sicily. 

bulls and bears : — A bull, on the Stock Exchange, is one 
who operates in expectation of a rise in stocks ; a bear is a 
person who sells stocks in expectation of a fall in the market. 

Jauncey Court : — The Jauneey family were prominent in 
the early New York days. This court was probably named after 
them. 

.Sigon: — Usually spelled ^gaeon ; another name for Briareus, 
a monster with a hundred arms. 



46 EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 

Daphnis : — In Greek myth, a shepherd who loved music. 

Nais : — In Greek myth, a happy young girl, a nymph. 

Cyclops : — One of a race of giants having but one eye — 
in the middle of the forehead. These giants helped Vulcan at 
his forge under Aetna. 

Galatea : — A sea-nymph beloved by the Cyclops Polyphe- 
mus. 

Silenus : — The foster-father and companion of Bacchus, 
god of wine. In pictures and sculpture Silenus is usually repre- 
sented as intoxicated. 

Fauns: — Fabled beings, half goat and half man. 

Arethusan ■water : — Arethusa, in Greek myth, was a wood- 
nymph, who was pursued by the river Alpheus. She was changed 
into a fountain, and ran under the sea to Sicily, where she rose 
near the city of Syracuse. Shelley has a poem on Arethusa. 

baton : — A rod or wand ; here, of course, a policeman's 
club. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

The author sees an organ-grinder playing his gay tunes in 
Wall Street, New York, among the buildings where enormous 
financial transactions are carried on. He (the author) imagines 
this wandering minstrel to be Pan himself, assuming a modern 
form. Read the notes carefully for what is said about Pan. No- 
tice, in the poem, how skillfully the author brings out the con- 
trast between the easy-going days of ancient Greece and the 
busy, rushing times of modern America. Of what value is the 
word serenely in the first stanza ? What is the " curbstone war " ? 
Do you think the old-fashioned Pan's pipe is common now ? 
Could a man play an organ and a pipe at the same time ? Why 
is the city spoken of as " sordid " ? What is the " civic ear " ? 
In the description of the player, how is the idea of his being 
Pan emphasized ? How was it that the bulls and bears drew to- 
gether ? In plain words who were the people whom the author 
describes under Greek names? Show how aptly the mytho- 
logical characters are fitted to modern persons. Read carefully 
what is said about the power of music, in the stanza beginning 
" O heart of Nature." Who was the man in blue ? Why did he 
interfere ? Why is the organ-grinder called a " vagrant demi- 
god " ? What was it that the author doubted ? What is meant 



PAN IN WALL STREET 47 

here by " Great Pan is dead " ? Does the author mean more 
than the mere words seem to express ? Do you think that peo- 
ple are any happier in these commercial times than they were 
in ancient Greece ? After you have studied the poem and mas- 
tered all the references, read the poem through, thinking of its 
meaning and its lively measure. 

Read Mrs. Browning's poem, A Musical Instrument, which is 
about Pan and his pipe of reeds. 



COLLATERAL READINGS 

Nooks and Corners of Old New York Charles Hemstreet 

In Old New York Thomas A. Janvier 

The Greatest Street in the World: 

Broadway Stephen Jenkins 

The God of Music (poem) . . . Edith M. Thomas 

A Musical Instrument Elizabeth Barrett Brown- 
ing 

Classic Myths (See Index) . . . CM. Gayley 

The Age of Fable Thomas Bulfineh 

A Butterfly in Wall Street (in 

Madrigals and Catches^ . . . Frank D. Sherman 
Come Pan, and Pipe (in Madrigals 

and Catches) " « « 

Pan Learns Music (poem) . . . Henry van Dyke 

Peeps at Great Cities: New York . Hildegarde Hawthorne 

Vignettes of Manhattan .... Brander Matthews 

New York Society Ralph Pulitzer 

In the Cities (poem) R. W. Gilder 

Up at a Villa — Down in the City . Robert Browning 

The Faun in Wall Street ^ (poem) . John Myers O'Hara 

1 In : The Little Book of Modern Verse, edited by J. B. Eitten- 
house. 



THE HAND OF LINCOLN 

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 

Look on this cast, and know the hand 

That bore a nation in its hold ; 
From this mute witness understand 

What Lincoln was, — how large of mould 

The man who sped the woodman's team, 
And deepest sunk the ploughman's share, 

And pushed the laden raft astream, 
Of fate before him unaware. 

This was the hand that knew to swing 

The axe — since thus would Freedom train 

Her son — and made the forest ring. 

And drove the wedge, and toiled amain. 

Firm hand, that loftier office took, 
A conscious leader's will obeyed, 

And, when men sought his word and look, 
With steadfast might the gathering swayed. 

No courtier's, toying with a sword, 
Nor minstrel's, laid across a lute ; 

A chief's, uplifted to the Lord 

When all the kings of earth were mute ! 

The hand of Anak, sinewed strong. 
The fingers that on greatness clutch ; 

Yet, lo ! the marks their lines along 
Of one who strove and suffered much. 



THE HAND OF LINCOLN 49 

For here in knotted cord and vein 
I trace the varying chart of years ; 

I know the troubled heart, the strain, 
The weight of Atlas — and the tears. 

Again I see the patient brow 

That palm erewhile was wont to press ; 
And now 't is furrowed deep, and now 

Made smooth with hope and tenderness. 

For something of a formless grace 
This moulded outline plays about ; 

A pitying flame, beyond our trace, 
Breathes like a spirit, in and out, — 

The love that cast an aureole 

Eound one who, longer to endure, 

Called mirth to ease his ceaseless dole. 
Yet kept his nobler purpose sure. 

Lo, as I gaze, the statured man. 

Built up from yon large hand, appears ; 

A type that Nature wills to plan 
But once in all a people's years. 

What better than this voiceless cast 

To tell of such a one as he. 
Since through its living semblance passed 

The thousrht that bade a race be free ! 



NOTES 

this cast : — A cast of Lincoln's hand was made by Leonard 
W. Volk, in 1860, on the Sunday following the nomination of 
Lincoln for the Presidency. The original, in bronze, can be seen 



50 EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 

at the National Museum in Washington. Various copies have 
been made in plaster. An anecdote concerning one of these is 
told on page 107 of William Dean Howells's Literary Friends 
and Acquaintances ; facing page 106 of the same book there is 
an interesting picture. In the Critic, volume 44, page 510, there 
is an article by Isabel Moore, entitled Hands that have Done 
Things ; a picture of Lincoln's hand, in plaster, is given in the 
course of this article. 

Anak : — The sons of Anak are spoken of in the Bible as a 
race of giants. See Numbers, 13 : 33 ; Deuteronomy, 9 : 2. 

Atlas : — In Greek story, the giant who held the world on 
his shoulders. 

the thought : — The Emancipation Proclamation. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

Read the poem through from beginning to end. Then go back to 
the first and study it more carefully. Notice that there is no pause 
at the end of the first stanza. In the ninth line, mentally put in 
how after know. Explain what is said about Freedom's training 
her son. Loftier office : Loftier than what ? Note that might is a 
noun. Mentally insert hatid after courtier's. Can you tell from 
the hand of a person whether he has suffered or not ? What 
does the author mean here by " the weight of Atlas " ? What is 
a " formless grace " ? Is the expression appropriate here ? What 
characteristic of Lincoln is referred to in the line beginning 
" Called mirth " ? Are great men so rare as the author seems to 
think ? Why is the cast a good means of telling of " such a one 
as he " ? Lock carefully at one of Lincoln's portraits, and then 
read this poem aloud to yourself. 

Compare this poem with the sonnet On the Life-Mask of 
Abraham Lincoln, page 210. 

COLLATERAL READINGS 

Abraham Lincoln : A Short Life . . . John G. Nieolay 

The Boys' Life of Lincoln Helen Nieolay 

Personal Traits of Abraham Lincoln . " " 

Lincoln the Lawyer F. T. Hill 

Passages from the Speeches and Letters 

of Abraham Lincoln R. W. Gilder (Ed.) ' 



THE HAND OF LINCOLN 51 

Lincola's Own Stories Anthony Gross 

Lincoln Norman Hapgood 

Abraham Lincoln, the Boy and the Man James Morgan 

Father Abraham Ida Tarbell 

He Knew Lincoln ^ " " 

Life of Abraham Lincoln " " 

Abraham Lincoln Robert G. Ingersoll 

Abraham Lincoln Noah Brooks 

Abraham Lincoln for Boys and Girls . C. W. Moores. 

The Graysons Edward Eggleston 

The Perfect Tribute i M. R. S. Andrews 

The Toy Shop 1 M.S.Gerry 

We Talked of Lincoln (poem)^ . . . E. W. Thomson 

Lincoln and the Sleeping Sentinel . . L. E. Chittenden 

O Captain, my Captain ! Walt Whitman 

When Lilacs last in the Dooryard 

Bloomed " « 

Poems E. C. Stedman 

An American Anthology " " " 

American Authors and their Homes, pp. 

157-172 F. W. Halsey 

American Authors at Home, pp. 273-291 J. L. and J. B. Gilder 

For portraits of E. C. Stedman, see Bookman, 34 : 592 ; Cur- 
rent Literature, 42 : 49. 

^ See page 41 for magazine reference. 
^ See Collier^ s Magazine, 4i2 : 11. 



JEAN VALJEAN 

AUGUSTA STEVENSON 

(Dramatized from Victor Hugo's Les Misirables) 

Scene II 
Time: Evening. 

Place : Village of D ; dining room of the Bishop'' s 

house. 

[The room is poorly furnished, hut orderly. A door at the 
back opens on the street. At one side, a window over- 
looks the garden ; at the other, curtains hang before an 
alcove. Mademoiselle, the Bishop''s Sister, a sweet- 
faced lady, sits by the fire, knitting. Madame, his 
Housekeeper, is laying the table for supper.^ 

Mlle. Has the Bishop returned from the service ? 

Madame. Yes, Mademoiselle. He is in his room, 
reading. Shall I call him ? 

Mlle. No, do not disturb him — he will come in 
good time — when supper is ready. 

Madame. Dear me — I forgot to get bread when 
I went out to-day. 

Mlle. Go to the baker's, then ; we will wait. 

\^Exit Madame. JPause.] 

\_Enter the Bishop. He is an old man, gentle and kindly.'] 
Bishop. I hope I have not kept you waiting, sister. 
Mlle. No, brother, Madame has just gone out for 

bread. She forgot it this morning. 

Bishop {having seated himself by the fire). The 

wind blows cold from the mountains to-night. 



JEAN VALJEAN 53 

Mlle. {nodding). All day it has been growing 
colder. 

Bishop. 'T will bring great suffering to the poor. 

Mlle. Who suffer too much already. 

Bishop. I would I could help them more than I 
do! 

Mlle. ^: You give all you have, my brother. You 
keep nothing for yourself — you have only bare neces- 
sities. 

Bishop. Well, I have sent in a bill for carriage 
hire in making pastoral visits. 

Mlle. Carriage hire! I did not know you ever 
rode. Now I am glad to hear that. A bishop should 
go in state sometimes. I venture to say your bill is 
small. 

Bishop. Three thousand francs. 

Mlle. Three thousand francs ! Why, I cannot be- 
lieve it ! 

Bishop. Here is the bill. 

Mlle. {reading hill). What is this ! 

Expenses of Cakkiage 

For furnishing soup to hospital 1500 francs 

For charitable society of D 500 " 

For foundlings 500 " 

For orphans 500 " 

Total 3000 francs 

So! that is your carriage hire! Ha, ha! I might 
have known it ! {.They laugh together.'] 

\_Enter Madame, excited, with bread.] 
Madame. Such news as I have heard ! The whole 

town is talking about it ! We should have locks put 

on our doors at once ! 

Mlle. What is it, Madame? What have you 

heard ? 



54 AUGUSTA STEVENSON 

Madame. They say there is a suspicious vagabond 
in the town. The inn-keeper refused to take him in. 
They say he is a released convict who once committed 
an awful crime. 

\_The Bishop is looking into the fire, paying no 
attention to Madame.^ 

Mlle. Do you hear what Madame is saying, brother? 

Bishop. Only a little. Are we in danger, Madame ? 

Madame. There is a convict in town, your Rev- 
erence ! 

Bishop. Do you fear we shall be robbed ? 

Madame. I do, indeed ! 

Bishop. Of what ? 

Madaivie. There are the six silver plates and the 
silver soup-ladle and the two silver candlesticks. 

Bishop. All of which we could do without. 

Madame. Do without! 

Mlle. 'T would be a great loss, brother. We could 
not treat a guest as is our wont. 

Bishop. Ah, there you have me, sister. I love to 
see the silver laid out for every guest who comes 
here. And I like the candles lighted, too ; it makes 
a brighter welcome. 

Mlle. A bishop's house should show some state. 

Bishop. Aye — to every stranger ! Henceforth, I 
should like every one of our six plates on the table 
whenever we have a guest here. 

Mlle. All of them? 

Madame. For one guest? 

Bishop. Yes — we have no right to hide treasures. 
Each guest shall enjoy all that we have. 

Madame. Then 't is time we should look to the 
locks on the doors, if we would keep our silver. I '11 
go for the locksmith now — 



JEAN VALJEAN 55 

Bishop. Stay! This house shall not be locked 
against any man ! Would you have me lock out my 
brothers ? [^ loud knock is heard at street door.'\ 

Come in ! 

\_Enter Jeaist Valjeaist, with his knapsack and cudgel. 
The loomen are frightened.~\ 

Jean {roughly) . See here ! My name is Jean Val- 
jean. I am a convict from the galleys. I was set free 
four days ago, and I am looking for work. I hoped to 
find a lodging here, but no one will have me. It was 
the same way yesterday and the day before. To-night 
a good woman told me to knock at your door. I have 
knocked. Is this an inn ? 

Bishop. Madame, put on another plate. 

Jean. Stop ! You do not understand, I think. 
Here is my passport — see what it says : " Jean Val- 
Jean, discharged convict, has been nineteen years in 
the galleys ; five years for theft ; fourteen years for 
having attempted to escape. He is a very dangerous 
man." There ! you know it all. I ask only for straw 
in your stable. 

Bishop. Madame, you will put white sheets on the 
bed in the alcove. 

\_Exit Madame. The Bishop turns to Jean.l 

We shall dine presently. Sit here by the fire, sir. 

Jean. What ! You will keep me ? You call me 
" sir" I Oh! I am going to dine ! I am to have a bed 
with sheets like the rest of the world — a bed ! It is 
nineteen years since I have slept in a bed ! I will pay 
anything you ask. You are a fine man. You are an 
innkeeper, are you not? 

Bishop. I am a priest who lives here. 

Jean. A priest ! Ah, yes — I ask your pardon — 
I did n't notice your cap and gown. 



56 AUGUSTA STEVENSON 

Bishop. Be seated near the fire, sir. 

[Jean deposits his knapsack, repeating to him' 
self with delight.'] 
Jean. He calls me sir — sir. {Aloud.) You will 
require me to pay, will you not ? 

Bishop. No, keep your money. How much have 
you? 

Jean. One hundred and nine francs. 
Bishop. How long did it take you to earn it ? 
Jean. Nineteen years. 

Bishop {sadly). Nineteen years — the best part 
of your life ! 

Jean. Aye, the best part • — I am now forty-six. 
A beast of burden would have earned more. 

Bishop. This lamp gives a very bad light, sister. 
[Mile, gets the tivo silver candlesticks from the 
mantel, lights them, and places them on the 
table.'] 

Jean. Ah, but you are good ! You don't despise 
me. You light your candles for me, — you treat me 
as a guest, — and I 've told you where I come from, 
who I am ! 

Bishop. This house does not demand of him who 
enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a 
grief. You suffer — you are hungry — you are wel- 
come. 

Jean. I cannot understand it — 

Bishop. This house is home to the man who needs 
a refuge. So, sir, this is your house now more than 
it is mine. Whatever is here is yours. What need 
have I to know your name ? Besides, before you told 
me, I knew it. 

Jean. What ! You knew my name ! 

Bishop. Yes, your name is — Brother. 



JEAN VALJEAN 57 

Jean. Stop ! I cannot bear it — you are so good — 

\_H6 buries his face in his hands. ^ 

\_Enter Madame with dishes for the table ; she continues 
passing in and out, preparing supper.'] 

Bishop. You have suffered much, sir — 

Jean (nodding). The red shirt, the ball on the 
ankle, a plank to sleep on, heat, cold, toil, the whip, 
the double chain for nothing, the cell for one word — 
even when sick in bed, still the chain ! Dogs, dogs are 
happier ! Nineteen years ! and now the yellow pass- 
port ! 

Bishop. Yes, you have suffered. 

Jean (with violence). I hate this world of laws and 
courts ! I hate the men who rule it ! For nineteen 
years my soul has had only thoughts of hate. For 
nineteen years I 've planned revenge. Do you hear ? 
Revenge — revenge ! 

Bishop. It is not strange that you should feel so. 
And if you continue to harbor those thoughts, you are 
only deserving of pity. But listen, my brother ; if, in 
spite of all you have passed through, your thoughts 
could be of peace and love, you would be better than 
any one of us. '[Pause. Jean reflects^] 

Jean (speaking violently). No, no! I do not be- 
long to your world of men. I am apart — a different 
creature from you all. The galleys made me different. 
I '11 have nothing to do with any of you ! 

Madame. The supper, your Reverence. 

\The Bishop glances at the table.] 

Bishop. It strikes me there is something missing 
from this table. [Madame hesitates.] 

Mlle. Madame, do you not understand ? 

[Madame steps to a cupboard, gets the remaining 
silver plates, and places them on the table.] 



58 AUGUSTA STEVENSON 

Bishop {gayly, turning to Jean). To table then, my 
friend! To table! 

\Jean remains for a moment, standing doggedly 
apart ; then he steps over to the chair await- 
ing him, Jerks it back, and sinks into it, with- 
out looking up.~\ 

Scene III 

Time : Dayhreak the next morning. 
Place : The Bishop's dining room. 



\_The room is dark, except for a faint light that comes in 
through window curtains. Jean Valjean creeps in from 
the alcove. He carries his knapsack and cudgel in one 
hand ; in the other, his shoes. He opens the window 
overlooking the garden ; the room becomes lighter. Jean 
steps to the mantel and lifts a silver candlestick.'] 

Jean (whisperi?ig) . Two hundred francs — double 
what I have earned in nineteen years ! 

[^He puts it in his knap)sack ; takes up the other 
candlestick ; shudders, and sets it down again.] 
No, no, he is good — he called me " sir " — 

l_He stands still, staring before him, his hand 

still gripping the candlestick. Suddenly he 

straightens up ; speaks bitterly.] 

Why not ? 'T is easy to give a bed and food ! Why 

does n't he keep men from the galleys ? Nineteen years 

for a loaf of bread ! 

\_Pauses a moment, then resolutely puts both 
candlesticks into his bag ; steps to the cup- 
board and takes out the silver plates and the 
ladle, and slips them into the bag.] 
All solid — I should gain at least one thousand 
francs. 'T is due me — due me for all these years ! 

\_Closes the bag. Pause.] 



JEAN VALJEAN 59 

No, not the candles — I owe him that much — 

£Se puts the candlesticks on mantel / takes up 
cudgel, knapsack, and shoes ; jumps out win- 
dow and disappears. Pause.'] 

\_Enter Madame. She shivers ; discovers the open window."] 

Madame. Why is that window open ? I closed it 
last night myself. Oh ! Could it be possible ? 

\_Crosses and looks at open cupboard.'] 
It is gone ! 

\_Ent6r the Bishop /rowi his room.] 

Bishop. Good morning, Madame ! 

Madame. Your Reverence ! The silver is gone ! 
Where is that man ? 

Bishop. In the alcove sleeping, X suppose. 

[Madame runs to curtains of alcove and looks 
in. Enter Mademoiselle. Madame turns.] 

He is gone ! 

Mlle. Gone? 

Madame. Aye, gone — gone! He has stolen our 
silver, the beautiful plates and the ladle ! I '11 inform 
the police at once ! \_Starts off. The Bishop stops her.] 

Bishop. Wait ! — Let me ask you this — was that 
silver ours ? 

Madame. Why — why not ? 

Bishop. Because it has always belonged to the poor. 
I have withheld it wrongfully. 

Mlle. Its loss makes no difference to Madame or 
me. 

Madame. Oh, no ! But what is your Reverence to 
eat from now ? 

Bishop. Are there no pewter plates ? 

Madame. Pewter has an odor. 

Bishop. Iron ones, then. 



60 AUGUSTA STEVENSON 

Madame. Iron has a taste. 
Bishop. Well, then, wooden plates. 

[^ knock is heard at street door.'] 
Come in. 

\^Snter an Officer and two Soldiers, dragging in 
Jean Valjean.] 

Officee. Your Reverence, we found your silver on 
this XQan. 

Bishop. Why not ? I gave it to him. I am glad to 
see you again, Jean. Why did you not take the candle- 
sticks, too ? 

Jean (trembling) . Your Reverence — 

Bishop. I told you everything in this house was 
yours, my brother. 

Officer. Ah, then what he said was true. But, of 
course, we did not believe him. We saw him creeping 
from your garden — 

Bishop. It is all right, I assure you. This man is a 
friend of mine. 

Officer. Then we can let him go ? 

Bishop. Certainly. \^Soldiers step hack.'] 

Jean {trembling). I am free? 

Officer. Yes ! You can go. Do you not under- 
stand ? \_Stejos back.] 

Bishop [to Jean). My friend, before you go away 
— here are your candlesticks {going to the mantel and 
bringing the candlesticks) ; take them. 

[Jean takes the candlesticks, seeming not to know 
what he is doing.] 

By the way, my friend, when you come again you 
need not come through the garden. The front door is 
closed only with a latch, day or night. {To the Offi- 
cer and Soldiers.) Gentlemen, you may withdraw. 

\_Exit Officer and Soldiers.] 



JEAN VALJEAN 61 

Jean {recoiling and holding out the candlesticks). 
No — no — I — I — 

Bishop. Say no more ; I understand. You felt that 
they were all owing to you from a world that had used 
you ill. Keep them, my friend, keep them. I would I 
had more to give you. It is small recompense for nine- 
teen years. 

[Jean stands bewildered, looking down at the 
candlesticks in his hands. ^ 
They will add something to your hundred francs. 
But do not forget, never forget, that you have prom- 
ised to use the money in becoming an honest man. 
Jean. I — promised — ? 

Bishop (not heeding). Jean Valjean, my brother, 
you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your 
soul that I am buying for you : I withdraw it from 
thoughts of hatred and revenge — I give it to peace 
and hope and God. 

[Jean stands as if stunned, staring at the Bishop, 
then turns and walks unsteadily from the 
room.'] 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

Jean Valjean, as a young man, was sent to the galleys for 
stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's hungry children. 
From time to time, when he tried to escape, his sentence was 
increased, so that he spent nineteen years as a convict. Scene I 
of Miss Stevenson's dramatization shows Jean Valjean being 
turned away from the inn because he has been in prison. 

What does the stage setting tell of the Bishop and his sister ? 
Notice, as you read, why each of the items in the stage setting 
is mentioned. Why is Madame made to leave the room — how 
does her absence help the action of the play? What is the pur- 
pose of the conversation about the weather? About the carriage 
hire? Why is the Bishop not more excited at Madame's news? 
What is gained by the talk about the silver? Notice the dra- 



62 AUGUSTA STEVENSON 

matic value of the Bishop's speech beginning " Stay ! " Why- 
does Jean Valjean speak so roughly when he enters? Why does 
he not try to conceal the fact that he is a convict? Why does 
not the Bishop reply directly to Jean Valjean's question? What 
would be the action of Mademoiselle and Madame while Jean 
is speaking ? What is Madame's action as she goes out? What 
is gained by the conversation between Jean and the Bishop? 
Why does the Bishop not reproach Jean for saying he will have 
revenge? Why is the silver mentioned so many times? 

While you are reading the first part of Scene III, think how 
it should be played. Note how much the stage directions add to 
the clearness of the scene. How long should the pause be, before 
Madame enters? What is gained by the calmness of the Bishop? 
How can he say that the silver was not his? What does the Bishop 
mean when he says, " I gave it to him "? What are Mademoiselle 
and Madame doing while the conversation with the officers and 
Jean Valjean is going on? Is it a good plan to let them drop so 
completely out of the conversation? Why does the Bishop say 
that Jean has promised ? Why does the scene close without 
Jean's replying to the Bishop? How do you think the Bishop's 
kindness has affected Jean Valjean's attitude toward life? 

Note how the action and the conversation increase in intensity 
as the play proceeds: Is this a good method ? Notice the use of 
contrast in speech and action. Note how the chief characters are 
emphasized. Can you discover the quality called " restraint," in 
this fragment of a play? How is it gained, and what is its value? 



EXERCISES 1 

Select a short passage from some book that you like, and try 
to put it into dramatic form, using this selection as a kind of 
model. Do not attempt too much at once, but think out carefully 
the setting, the stage directions, and the dialogue for a brief 
fragment of a play. 

Make a series of dramatic scenes from the same book, so that 
a connected story is worked out. 

Read a part of some modern drama, such as The Piper, or 
The Blue Bird, or one of Mr. Howells's little farces, and notice 

^ Additional suggestions for dramatic work are given on page 316. 



JEAN VALJEAN 63 

how it makes use of setting and stage directions; how the con- 
versation is broken up; Low the situation is brought out in the 
dialogue; how each person is made to speak in his own char- 
acter. 

After you have done the reading suggested above, make an- 
other attempt at dramatizing a scene from a book, and see what 
improvement you can make upon the sort of thing you did at 
first. 

It might be interesting for two or three persons to work on a 
bit of dramatization together, and then give the fragment of a 
play in simple fashion before the class. Or the whole class may 
work on the play, and then select some of their number to per- 
form it. 

COLLATERAL READINGS 

A Dramatic Reader: Book Five . Augusta Stevenson 

Plays for the Home " " 

Jean Valjean (translated and 

abridged from Victor Hugo's 

Les Miserables) S. E. Wiltse (Ed.) 

The Little Men Play (adapted 

from Louisa Alcott's Little 

Men) E.L.Gould 

The Little Women Play . . . " " " 

The St. Nicholas Book of Plays . Century Company 

The Silver Thread and Other Folk 

Plays Constance Maekay 

Patriotic Plays and Pageants . . " " 

Fairy Tale Plays and How to Act 

Them Mrs. Hugh Bell 

Festival Plays Marguerite Merington 

Short Plays from Dickens . . . H. B. Browne 

The Piper Josephine Preston Peabody 

The Blue Bird Maurice Maeterlinck 

Riders to the Sea J. M. Synge 

She Stoops to Conquer .... Oliver Goldsmith 

The Rivals Richard Brinsley Sheridan 

Prince Otto R. L. Stevenson 

The Canterbury Pilgrims . . . Percy Mackaye 

The Elevator William Dean Howells 

The Mouse Trap " " « 



64 AUGUSTA STEVENSON 

The Sleeping Car ...... William Dean Howells 

The Register " " « 

The Story of Waterloo .... Henry Irving 

The Children's Theatre .... A. Minnie Herts 

The Art of Play-writing . . . Alfred Hennequin 



A COMBAT ON THE SANDS 

MARY JOHNSTON 

(From To Have and to Hold, Chapters XXI and XXII) 

A FEW minutes later saw me almost upon the party 
gathered about the grave. The grave had received 
that which it was to hold until the crack of doom, and 
was now being rapidly filled with sand. The crew of 
deep-dyed villains worked or stood or sat in silence, 
but all looked at the grave, and saw me not. As the 
last handful of sand made it level with the beach, I 
walked into their midst, and found myself face to face 
with the three candidates for the now vacant captaincy. 

"Give you good-day, gentlemen," I cried. "Is it 
your captain that you bury or one of your crew, or is 
it only pezos and pieces of eight ? 

" The sun shining on so much bare steel hurts my 
eyes," I said. " Put up, gentlemen, put up ! Cannot 
one rover attend the funeral of another without all this 
crowding and display of cutlery ? If you will take the 
trouble to look around you, you will see that I have 
brought to the obsequies only myself," 

One by one cutlass and sword were lowered, and 
those who had drawn them, falling somewhat back, 
spat and swore and laughed. The man in black and 
silver only smiled gently and sadly. " Did you drop 
from the blue ? " he asked. " Or did you come up from 
the sea?" 

" I came out of it," I said. " My ship went down 
in the storm yesterday. Your little cockboat yonder 
was more fortunate." I waved my hand toward that 



66 MARY JOHNSTON 

ship of three hundred tons, then twirled my mustaches 
and stood at gaze. 

" Was your ship so large, then ? " demanded Par- 
adise, while a murmur of admiration, larded with 
oaths, ran around the circle. 

" She was a very great galleon," 1 replied, with a 
sigh for the good ship that was gone. 

A moment's silence, during which they all looked 
at me. " A galleon," then said Paradise softly. 

" They that sailed her yesterday are to-day at the 
bottom of the sea," I continued. " Alackaday ! so are 
one hundred thousand pezos of gold, three thousand 
bars of silver, ten frails of pearls, jewels uncounted, 
cloth of gold and cloth of silver. She was a very rich 
prize." 

The circle sucked in their breath. " All at the bot- 
tom of the sea?" queried Red Gil, with gloating eyes 
fixed upon the smiling water. " Not one pezo left, not 
one little, little pearl ? " 

I shook my head and heaved a prodigious sigh. 
"The treasure is gone," I said, "and the men with 
whom I took it are gone. I am a captain with neither 
ship nor crew. I take you, my friends, for a ship and 
crew without a captain. The inference is obvious." 

The ring gaped with wonder, then strange oaths 
arose. Red Gil broke into a bellow of angry laughter, 
while the Spaniard glared like a catamount about to 
spring. "So you would be our captain?" said Para- 
dise, picking up another shell, and poising it upon a 
hand as fine and small as a woman's. 

" Faith, you might go farther and fare worse," I 
answered, and began to hum a tune. When I had 
finished it, " I am Kirby," I said, and waited to see 
if that shot should go wide or through the hull. 



A COMBAT ON THE SANDS 67 

For two minutes the dash of the surf and the cries 
of the wheeling sea fowl made the only sound in that 
part of the world ; then from those half -clad rapscal- 
lions arose a shout of " Kirby ! " — a shout in which 
the three leaders did not join. That one who looked 
a gentleman rose from the sand and made me a low 
bow. " Well met, noble captain," he cried in those 
his honey tones. " You will doubtless remember me 
who was with you that time at Maracaibo when you 
sunk the galleasses. Five years have passed since 
then, and yet I see you ten years younger and three 
inches taller." 

" I touched once at the Lucayas, and found the 
spring de Leon sought," I said. " Sure the waters 
have a marvelous effect, and if they give not eternal 
youth at least renew that which we have lost." 

" Truly a potent aq«a vitas," he remarked, still with 
thoughtful melancholy. " I see that it hath changed 
your eyes from black to gray." 

" It hath that peculiar virtue," I said, " that it can 
make black seem white." 

The man with the woman's mantle drawn about 
him now thrust himself from the rear to the front 
rank. " That 's not Kirby ! " he bawled. " He 's no 
more Kirby than I am Kirby! Didn't I sail with 
Kirby from the Summer Isles to Cartagena and back 
again? He 's a cheat, and I am a-going to cut his heart 
out ! " He was making at me with a long knife, when 
I whipped out my rapier. 

" Am I not Kirby, you dog ? " I cried, and ran him 
through the shoulder. 

He dropped, and his fellows surged forward with a 
yell. " Yet a little patience, my masters ! " said Para- 
dise in a raised voice and with genuine amusement in 



68 MARY JOHNSTON 

his eyes. " It is true that that Kirby with whom I and 
our friend there on the ground sailed was somewhat 
short and as swart as a raven, besides having a cut 
across his face that had taken away part of his lip and 
the top of his ear, and that this gentleman who an- 
nounces himself as Kirby hath none of Kirby's marks. 
But we are fair and generous and open to convic- 
tion " — 

"He'll have to convince my cutlass! " roared Red 
Gil. 

I turned upon him. " If I do convince it, what 
then? " I demanded. " If I convince your sword, you 
of Spain, and yours, Sir Black and Silver ? " 

The Spaniard stared. " I was the best sword in 
Lima," he said stiffly. " I and my Toledo will not 
change our minds." 

" Let him try to convince Paradise ; he 's got no 
reputation as a swordsman ! " cried out the grave- 
digger with the broken head. 

A roar of laughter followed this suggestion, and 
I gathered from it and from the oaths and allusions 
to this or that time and place that Paradise was not 
without reputation. 

I turned to him. " If I fight you three, one by one, 
and win, am I Kirby ? " 

He regarded the shell with which he was toying 
with a thoughtful smile, held it up that the light 
might strike through its rose and pearl, then crushed 
it to dust between his fingers. 

"Ay," he said with an oath. "If you win against 
the cutlass of Red Gil, the best blade of Lima, and 
the sword of Paradise, you may call yourself the devil 
an you please, and we will all subscribe to it." 

I lifted my hand. " I am to have fair play ? " 



A COMBAT ON THE SANDS 69 

As one man that crew of desperate villains swore 
that the odds should be only three to one. By this 
the whole matter had presented itself to them as an 
entertainment more diverting than bullfight or bear- 
baiting. They that follow the sea, whether honest 
men or black-hearted knaves, have in their composi- 
tion a certain childlikeness that makes them easily 
turned, easily led, and easily pleased. The wind of 
their passion shifts quickly from point to point, one 
moment blowing a hurricane, the next sinking to a 
happy-go-lucky summer breeze. I have seen a little 
thing convert a crew on the point of mutiny into a 
set of rollicking, good-natured souls who — until the 
wind veered again — would not hurt a fly. So with 
these. They spread themselves into a circle, squatting 
or kneeling or standing upon the white sand in the 
bright sunshine, their sinewy hands that should have 
been ingrained red clasped over their knees, or, arms 
akimbo, resting upon their hips, on their scoundrel 
faces a broad smile, and in their eyes that had looked 
on nameless horrors a pleasurable expectation as of 
spectators in a playhouse awaiting the entrance of the 
players. 

" There is really no good reason why we should 
gratify your whim," said Paradise, still amused. " But 
it will serve to pass the time. We will fight you, one 
by one." 

"Andif I win?" 

He laughed. " Then, on the honor of a gentleman, 
you are Kirby and our captain. If you lose, we will 
leave you where you stand for the gulls to bury." 

" A bargain," I said, and drew my sword. 

" I first! " roared Red Gil. " God's wounds ! there 
will need no second ! " 



70 MARY JOHNSTON 

As he spoke he swung his cutlass and made an arc 
of blue flame. The weapon became in his hands a 
flail, terrible to look upon, making lightnings and 
whistling in the air, but in reality not so deadly as it 
seemed. The fury of his onslaught would have beaten 
down the guard of any mere swordsman, but that I 
was not. A man, knowing his weakness and insuf- 
ficiency in many and many a thing, may yet know his 
strength in one or two and his modesty take no hurt. 
I was ever master of my sword, and it did the thing I 
would have it do. Moreover, as I fought I saw her as 
I had last seen her, standing against the bank of sand, 
her dark hair, half braided, drawn over her bosom and 
hanging to her knees. Her eyes haunted me, and my 
lips yet felt the touch of her hand. I fought well, — 
how well the lapsing of oaths and laughter into breath- 
less silence bore witness. 

The ruffian against whom I was pitted began to 
draw his breath in gasps. He was a scoundrel not fit 
to die, less fit to live, unworthy of a gentleman's steel. 
I presently ran him through with as little compunc- 
tion and as great a desire to be quit of a dirty job as 
if he had been a mad dog. He fell, and a little later, 
while I was engaged with the Spaniard, his soul went 
to that hell which had long gaped for it. To those his 
companions his death was as slight a thing as would 
theirs have been to him. In the eyes of the two 
remaining would-be leaders he was a stumbling-block 
removed, and to the squatting, open-mouthed common- 
alty his taking off weighed not a feather against the 
solid entertainment I was affording them. I was now 
a better man than E,ed Gil, — that was all. 

The Spaniard was a more formidable antagonist. 
The best blade of Lima was by no means to be de- 



A COMBAT ON THE SANDS 71 

spised : but Lima is a small place, and its blades can 
be numbered. The sword that for three years had 
been counted the best in all the Low Countries was 
its better. But I fought fasting and for the second 
time that morning, so maybe the odds were not so 
great. I wounded him slightly, and presently suc- 
ceeded in disarming him. "Am I Kirby?" I de- 
manded, with my point at his breast. 

" Kirby, of course, senor," he answered with a sour 
smile, his eyes upon the gleaming blade. 

I lowered my point and we bowed to each other, 
after which he sat down upon the sand and applied 
himself to stanching the bleeding from his wound. 
The pirate ring gave him no attention, but stared at 
me instead. I was now a better man than the Spaniard. 

The man in black and silver rose and removed his 
doublet, folding it very carefully, inside out, that the 
sand might not injure the velvet, then drew his rapier, 
looked at it lovingly, made it bend until point and 
hilt well-nigh met, and faced me with a bow. 

"You have fought twice, and must be weary," he 
said. " Will you not take breath before we engage, 
or will your long rest afterward suffice you ? " 

" I will rest aboard my ship," I made reply. "And 
as I am in a hurry to be gone we won't delay." 

Our blades had no sooner crossed than I knew that 
in this last encounter I should need every whit of my 
skill, all my wit, audacity, and strength. I had met 
my equal, and he came to it fresh and I jaded. I 
clenched my teeth and prayed with all my heart ; I set 
her face before me, and thought if I should fail her to 
what ghastly fate she might come, and I fought as I 
had never fought before. The sound of the surf be- 
came a roar in my ears, the sunshine an intolerable 



72 MARY JOHNSTON 

blaze of light ; the blue above and around seemed sud- 
denly beneath my feet as well. We were fighting 
high in the air, and had fought thus for ages. I knew 
that he made no thrust I did not parry, no feint I 
could not interpret. I knew that my eye was more 
quick to see, my brain to conceive, and my hand to 
execute than ever before ; but it was as though I held 
that knowledge of some other, and I myself was far 
away, at Weyanoke, in the minister's garden, in the 
haunted wood, anywhere save on that barren islet. I 
heard him swear under his breath, and in the face I 
had set before me the eyes brightened. As if she had 
loved me I fought for her with all my powers of body 
and mind. He swore again, and my heart laughed 
within me. The sea now roared less loudly, and I 
felt the good earth beneath my feet. Slowly but surely 
I wore him out. His breath came short, the sweat 
stood upon his forehead, and still I deferred my attack. 
He made the thrust of a boy of fifteen, and I smiled 
as I put it by. 

" Why don't you end it ? " he breathed. " Finish 
and be hanged to you ! " 

For answer I sent his sword fiying over the nearest 
hillock of sand. "Am I Kirby?" I said. He fell 
back against the heaped-up sand and leaned there, 
panting, with his hand to his side. " Kirby or devil," 
he replied. " Have it your own way." 

I turned to the now highly excited rabble. " Shove 
the boats off, half a dozen of you I " I ordered. " Some 
of you others take up that carrion there and throw it 
into the sea. The gold upon it is for your pains. You 
there with the wounded shoulder you have no great 
hurt. I '11 salve it with ten pieces of eight from the 
captain's own share, the next prize we take." 



A COMBAT ON THE SANDS 73 

A shout of acclamation arose that scared the sea 
fowl. They who so short a time before had been 
ready to tear me limb from limb now with the great- 
est apparent delight hailed me as captain. How soon 
they might revert to their former mood was a question 
that I found not worth while to propound to my- 
self. 

By this the man in black and silver had recovered 
his breath and his equanimity. " Have you no com- 
mission with which to honor me, noble captain ? " he 
asked in gently reproachful tones. " Have you forgot 
how often you were wont to employ me in those sweet 
days when your eyes were black ? " 

" By no means, Master Paradise," I said courte- 
ously. " I desire your company and that of the gen- 
tleman from Lima. You will go with me to bring up 
the rest of my party. The three gentlemen of the 
broken head, the bushy ruff, which I protest is vastly 
becoming, and the wounded shoulder will escort us." 

"The rest of your party? " said Paradise softly. 

" Ay," I answered nonchalantly. " They are down 
the beach and around the point warming themselves 
by a fire which this piled-up sand hides from you. 
Despite the sunshine it is a biting air. Let us be 
going! This island wearies me, and I am anxious to 
be on board ship and away." 

" So small an escort scarce befits so great a cap- 
tain," he said. " We will all attend you." One and 
all started forward. 

I called to mind and gave utterance to all the oaths 
I had heard in the wars. " I entertain you for my 
subordinate whom I command, and not who commands 
me ! " I cried, when my memory failed me. " As for 
you, you dogs, who would question your captain and 



74 MARY JOHNSTON 

his doings, stay where you are, if you would not be 
lessoned in earnest ! " 

Sheer audacity is at times the surest steed a man 
can bestride. Now at least it did me good service. 
With oaths and grunts of admiration the pirates stayed 
where they were, and went about their business of 
launching the boats and stripping the body of Red 
Gil, while the man in black and silver, the Spaniard, 
the two gravediggers, the knave with the wounded 
shoulder, and myself walked briskly up the beach. 

With these five at my heels I strode up to the dy- 
ing fire and to those who had sprung to their feet at 
our approach. " Sparrow," I said easily, " luck being 
with us as usual, I have fallen in with a party of 
rovers. I have told them who I am, — that Kirby, 
to wit, whom an injurious world calls the blackest 
pirate unhanged, — and I have recounted to them how 
the great galleon which I took some months ago went 
down yesterday with all on board, you and I with these 
others being the sole survivors. By dint of a little 
persuasion they have elected me their captain, and we 
will go on board directly and set sail for the Indies, a 
hunting ground which we never should have left. You 
need not look so blank ; you shall be my mate and 
right hand still." I turned to the five who formed 
my escort. " This, gentlemen, is my mate, Jeremy 
Sparrow by name, who hath a taste for divinity that 
in no wise interferes with his taste for a galleon or a 
guarda costa. This man, Diccon Demon by name, was 
of my crew. The gentleman without a sword is my 
prisoner, taken by me from the last ship I sunk. How 
he, an Englishman, came to be upon a Spanish bark 
I have not found leisure to inquire. The lady is my 
prisoner, also." 



A COMBAT ON THE SANDS 75 

" Sure by rights she should be gaoler and hold all 
men's hearts in ward," said Paradise, with a low bow 
to my unfortunate captive. 

While he spoke a most remarkable transformation 
was going on. The minister's grave, rugged, and 
deeply lined face smoothed itself and shed ten years 
at least 5 in the eyes that I had seen wet with noble 
tears a laughing devil now lurked, while his strong- 
mouth became a loose-lipped, devil-may-care one. His 
head with its aureole of bushy, grizzled hair set itself 
jauntily upon one side, and from it and from his face 
and his whole great frame breathed a wicked jollity 
quite indescribable. 

" Odsbodikins, captain ! " he cried. "Kirby's luck ! 
— 't will pass into a saw ! Adzooks ! and so you 're 
captain once more, and I 'm mate once more, and we 've 
a ship once more, and we 're off once more 

To sail the Spanish Main, 
And give the Spaniard pain, 

Heave ho, bully boy, heave ho ! 

By 'r lakin ! I 'm too dry to sing. It will take all the 
wine of Xeres in the next galleon to unparch my 
tongue ! " 

NOTES 

the grave : — This refers to the latter part of chapter 21 
of To Have and to Hold ; the hero, Ralph Percy, who has been 
shipwrecked with his companions, discovers a group of pirates 
burying their dead captain. 

pezos and pieces of eight : — peso is the Spanish word 
for dollar ; pieces of eight are dollars also, each dollar containing 
eight reals. 

the man in black and silver : — Paradise, an Englishman. 

frails : — Baskets made of rushes. 

Kirby : — A renowned pirate mentioned in chapter 21. 



76 MARY JOHNSTON 

Maracaibo : — The city or the gulf of that name in Vene- 
zuela. 

galleasses : — Heavy, low-built vessels having sails as well 
as oars. 

Lucayas : — An old name for the Bahama Islands. 

de Leon : — Ponce de Leon discovered Florida in 1513 ; he 
searched long for a fountain which would restore youth. 

aqua vitae : — Latin for loater of life. 

Summer Isles : — Another name for the Bermuda Islands. 

Cartagena : — A city in Spain. 

Lima : — A city in Peru. 

Toledo : — A " Toledo blade " — a sword of the very finest 
temper, made in Toledo, Spain. 

the Lovr Countries : — Holland and Belgium. 

senor : — The Spanish word for sir. 

"Weyanoke : — The home of the hero, near Jamestown, 
Virginia. 

Sparro'w : — A minister, one of the hero's companions; see 
chapter 3 of To Have and to Hold. 

guarda costa : — Coast guard. 

Dice on : — Ralph Percy's servant. 

the gentleman ^without a sword : — Lord Carnal, an 
enemy of Percy. 

the lady : — She is really Percy's wife. 

Odsbodikins ; Adzooks : — Oaths much used two cen- 
turies ago. 

By 'r lakin : — By our ladykin (little lady) ; an oath by 
the Virgin Mary. 

Xeres : — The Spanish town after which sherry wine is 
named. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

This selection is easily understood. Ralph Percy, his wife, 
and several others (see notes) are cast on a desert shora after 
the sinking of their boat. Percy leaves his companions for a 
time and falls among pirates ; he pretends to be a " sea-rover" 
himself. Why does he allude to the pirate ship as a "cock- 
boat " ? Why are the pirates impressed by his remarks ? Why 
does Percy emphasize the riches of the sunken ship ? Is what 
he says true ? (See chapter 19 of To Have and to Hold.) If not, 



A COMBAT ON THE SANDS 77 

is he justified in telling a falsehood ? Is he really Kirby ? Is he 
fortunate in his assertion that he is ? How does he explain his 
lack of resemblance to Kirby? What kind of person is the 
hero ? Why does he wish to become the leader of the pirates ? 
Is it possible that the pirate crew should change their attitude 
so suddenly ? Is it a good plan in a story to make a hero tell of 
his own successes ? Characterize the man in black and silver. 
How does the author make ns feel the action and peril of the 
struggle ? How does she make us feel the long duration of the 
fight with Paradise ? Do you like the hero's behavior with 
the defeated pirates ? Why is he so careful to repeat to the 
minister what he has told the pirates ? Why does the miinister 
appear to change his character ? 

Can you make this piece into a little play ? 



THEME SUBJECTS 

The Real Pirates The Search for Gold 

Spanish Gold Story-book Heroes 

A Fight for Life Along the Sea Shore 

A Famous Duel A Barren Island 

Buried Treasure The Rivals 

Playing Pirates Land Pirates 

Sea Stories that I Like The Pirates in Peter Pan 

Captain Kidd A Struggle for Leadership 

Ponce de Leon Our High School Play 



SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING 

Try to make a fragment of a play out of this selection. In this 
process, all the class may work together under the direction of 
the teacher, or each pupil may make his own attempt to drama- 
tize the piece. 

In writing the drama, tell first what the setting is. In doing 
so, you had better look up some modern play and see how the 
setting is explained to the reader or the actors. Now show the 
pirates at work, and give a few lines of their conversation; then 
have the hero come upon the scene. Indicate the speech of each 
person, and put in all necessary stage directions. Perhaps you 
will want to add more dialogue than there is here. Some of the 



78 MARY JOHNSTON 

onlookers may have something to say. Perhaps you will wish to 
leave something out. It might be well, while the fighting is go- 
ing on, to bring in remarks from the combatants and the other 
pirates. You might look up the duel scene in Hamlet for this 
point. You can end your play with the departure of the group ; 
or you can write a second scene, in which the hero's companions 
appear, including the lady. Considerable dialogue could be in- 
vented here, and a new episode added — a quarrel, a plan for 
organization, or a merry-making. 

When your play is finished, you may possibly wish to have it 
acted before the class. A few turbans, sashes, and weapons will 
be sufficient to give an air of piracy to the group of players. 
Some grim black mustaches would complete the effect. 

A Pirate Story : — Tell old-fashioned " yarn " of adven- 
ture, in which a modest hero relates his own experiences. Give 
your imagination a good deal of liberty. Do not waste much 
time in getting started, but plunge very soon into the actual 
story. Let your hero tell how he fell among the pirates. Then go 
on with the conversation that ensued — the threats, the boasting, 
and the bravado. Make the hero report his struggles, or the tricks 
that he resorted to in order to outwit the sea-rovers. Perhaps 
he failed at first and got into still greater dangers. Follow out 
his adventures to the moment of his escape. Make your descrip- 
tions short and vivid; put in as much direct conversation as 
possible; keep the action brisk and spirited. Try to write a 
lively tale that would interest a group of younger boys. 

COLLATERAL READINGS 

To Have and to Hold Mary Johnston 

Prisoners of Hope " " 

The Long Roll " " 

Cease Firing " " 

Audrey " " 

The Virginians W. M. Thackeray 

White Aprons Maude Wilder Goodwin 

The Gold Bug Edgar Allan Poe 

Treasure Island R. L. Stevenson 

Kidnapped " " 

Ebb Tide « " 



A COMBAT ON THE SANDS 79 

Buccaneers and Pirates of our Coast . . Frank E.. Stockton 

KateBonnett " " 

Drake Julian Corbett 

Drake and his Yeomen James Barnes 

Drake, the Sea-king of Devon . . . . G. M. Towle 

Ealeigh " « 

Red Rover ........... J. F. Cooper 

The Pirate Walter Scott 

Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe 

Two Years before the Mast R. H. Dana 

Tales of a Traveller (Part IV) .... Washington Irving 

Nonsense Novels (chapter 8) .... Stephen Leacock 
The Duel (in The Master of Ballantrae, 

chapter 4) R. L. Stevenson 

The Lost Galleon (poem) Bret Harte 

Stolen Treasure Howard Pyle 

Jack Ballister's Fortunes " " 

Buried Treasure R. B. Paine 

The Last Buccaneer (poem) Charles Kingsley 

The Book of the Ocean Ernest Ingersoll 

Ocean Life in the Old Sailing-Ship Days . J. D. Whidden 

For Portraits of Miss Johnston, see Bookman, 20 : 402; 28: 
193. 



THE GRASSHOPPER 

EDITH M. THOMAS 

Shuttle of the sunburnt grass, 

Fifer in the dun cuirass, 

Fifing shrilly in the morn. 

Shrilly still at eve unworn ; 

Now to rear, now in the van, 

Grayest of the elfin clan : 

Though I watch their rustling flight, 

I can never guess aright 

Where their lodging-places are ; 

'Mid some daisy's golden star. 

Or beneath a roofing leaf, 

Or in fringes of a sheaf, 

Tenanted as soon as bound ! 

Loud thy reveille doth sound. 

When the earth is laid asleep. 

And her dreams are passing deep, 

On mid- August afternoons ; 

And through all the harvest moons. 

Nights brimmed up with honeyed peace, 

Thy gainsaying doth not cease. 

When the frost comes, thou art dead ; 

We along the stubble tread, 

On blue, frozen morns, and note 

No least murmur is afloat : 

Wondrous still our fields are then, 

Fifer of the elfin men ! 



THE GRASSHOPPER 81 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

Why is the grasshopper called a " shuttle " ? What does the 
word still mean here ? Who are the " elfin elan " ? By whom is 
the sheaf tenanted ? What is a reveille ? Does the grasshopper 
chirp at night ? Why is its cry called " gainsaying " ? 

See how simple the meter (measure) is in this little poem. 
Ask your teacher to explain how it is represented by these char- 
acters : 

— V — ^ — w — 

— w — w— w — 

Note which signs indicate the accented syllables. See whether or 
not the accent comes at the end of the line. The rhyme-scheme 
is called a couplet, because of the way in which two lines are 
linked together. This kind of rhyme is represented by aa, bb, 
cc, etc. 

EXERCISES 

Find some other poem that has the same meter and rhyme 
that this one has. Try to write a short poem of five or six coup- 
lets, using this meter and rhyme. You do not need to choose a 
highly poetic subject : Try something very simple. 

Perhaps you can " get a start " from one of the lines given 
below : — 

1. Glowing, darting dragon-fly. 

2. Voyager on dusty wings (A Moth). 

3. Buzzing through the fragrant air (A Bee). 

4. Trembling lurker in the gloom (A Mouse). 

5. Gay red-throated epicure (A humming-bird). 

6. Stealthy vagrant of the night (An Owl). 

7. Flashing through your crystal room (A Gold-fish). 

8. Fairyland is all awake. 

9. Once when all the woods were green. 
10. In the forest is a pool. 



COLLATERAL READINGS 

The Grasshopper and Cricket John Keats 

The Grasshopper and the Cricket .... Leigh Hunt 
Little Brother of the Ground Edwin Markham 



82 EDITH M. THOMAS 

The Humble Bee E,. W. Emerson 

The Cricket Percy Mackaye 

The Katydid « " 

A Glow Worm (in Little Folk Lyrics) . . F. D. Sherman 

Bees " " " "... " " 



MOLY 

EDITH M. THOMAS 

The root is hard to loose 
From hold of earth by mortals , but Gods' power 
Can all things do. 'T is black, but bears a flower 
As white as milk. (Chapman's Homer.) 

Traveller, pluck a stem of moly, 

If thou touch at Circe's isle, — 
Hermes' moly, growing solely 

To undo enchanter's wile. 
When she. proffers thee her chalice, — 
Wine and spices mixed with malice, — 
When she smites thee with her staff 
To transform thee, do thou laugh ! 
Safe thou art if thou but bear 
The least leaf of moly rare. 
Close it grows beside her portal, 
Springing from a stock immortal, — 
Yes, and often has the Witch 
Sought to tear it from its niche ; 
But to thwart her cruel will 
The wise God renews it still. 
Though it grows in soil perverse. 
Heaven hath been its jealous nurse, 
And a flower of snowy mark 
Springs from root and sheathing dark; 
Kingly safeguard, only herb 
That can brutish passion curb ! 
Some do think its name should be 
Shield-heart, White Integrity. 



84 EDITH M. THOMAS 

Traveller, pluck a stem of moly, 
If thou touch at Circe's isle, — 

Hermes' moly, growing solely 
To undo enchanter's wile ! 

NOTES 

Chapman's Homer : — George Chapman (1559 ?-1634) 
was an English poet. He translated Homer from the Greek into 
English verse. 

mioly : — An herb with a black root and a white flower, which 
Hermes gave to Odysseus in order to help him withstand the 
spell of the witch Circe. 

Circe: — A witch who charmed her victims with a drink that 
she prepared for them, and then changed them into the animals 
they in character most resembled. 

Hermes : — The messenger of the other Greek gods ; he 
was crafty and eloquent. 

The wise God : — Hermes, or Mercury. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

Before you try to study this poem carefully, find out some- 
thing of the story of Ulysses and Circe : when you have this in- 
formation, the poem will become clear. Notice how the author 
applies the old Greek tale to the experiences of everyday life. 
This would be a good poem to memorize. 

COLLATERAL READINGS 

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer John Keats 

The Strayed Reveller Matthew Arnold 

The Wine of Circe Dante Gabriel Rossetti 

Tanglewood Tales (Circe's Palace) . Nathaniel Hawthorne 

Greek Story and Song, pp. 214-225 . A. J. Church 

The Odyssey, pp. 151-164 (School Ed.) G. H. Palmer (Trans.) 

Classic Myths, chapter 24 . .... C. M. Gayley 

The Age of Fable, p. 295 Thomas Bulfinch 

The Prayer of the Swine to Circe . , Austin Dobson 

PICTURES 

The Wine of Circe Sir Edward Burne-Jones 

Circe and the Companions of Ulysses Briton Riviere 



THE PROMISED LAND 

MARY ANTIN 
(From Chapter IX of The Promised Land) 

During Ms three years of probation, my father had 
made a number of false starts in business. His history 
for that period is the history of thousands who come 
to America, like him, with pockets empty, hands un- 
trained to the use of tools, minds cramped by centuries 
of repression in their native land. Dozens of these men 
pass under your eyes every day, my American friend, 
too absorbed in their honest affairs to notice the looks 
of suspicion which you cast at them, the repugnance 
with which you shrink from their touch. You see them 
shuffle from door to door with a basket of spools and 
buttons, or bending over the sizzling irons in a base- 
ment tailor shop, or rummaging in your ash can, or 
moving a pushcart from curb to curb, at the command 
of the burly policeman. "The Jew peddler ! " you say, 
and dismiss him from your premises and from your 
thoughts, never dreaming that the sordid drama of his 
days may have a moral that concerns you. What 
if the creature with the untidy beard carries in his 
bosom his citizenship papers ? What if the cross-legged 
tailor is supporting a boy in college who is one day 
going to mend your state constitution for you ? What 
if the ragpicker's daughters are hastening over the 
ocean to teach your children in the public schools? 
Think, every time you pass the greasy alien on the 
street, that he was born thousands of years before the 
oldest native American ; and he may have something 



86 MARY ANTIN 

to communicate to you, when you two shall have 
learned a common language. Remember that his very 
physiognomy is a cipher the key to which it behooves 
you to search for most diligently. 

By the time we joined my father, he had surveyed 
many avenues of approach toward the coveted citadel 
of fortune. One of these, heretofore untried, he now 
proposed to essay, armed with new courage, and 
cheered on by the presence of his family. In partner- 
ship with an energetic little man who had an English 
chapter in his history, he prepared to set up a refresh- 
ment booth on Crescent Beach. But while he was com- 
pleting arrangements at the beach, we remained in 
town, where we enjoyed the educational advantages of a 
thickly populated neighborhood; namely, Wall Street, 
in the West End of Boston. 

Anybody who knows Boston knows that the West 
and North Ends are the wrong ends of that city. They 
form the tenement district, or, in the newer phrase, 
the slums of Boston. Anybody who is acquainted with 
the slums of any American metropolis knows that that 
is the quarter where poor immigrants foregather, to 
live, for the most part, as unkempt, half-washed, toil- 
ing, unaspiring foreigners ; pitiful in the eyes of social 
missionaries, the despair of boards of health, the hope 
of ward politicians, the touchstone of American democ- 
racy. The well-versed metropolitan knows the slums 
as a sort of house of detention for poor aliens, where 
they live on probation till they can show a certificate 
of good citizenship. 

He may know all this and yet not guess how Wall 
Street, in the West End, appears in the eyes of a little 
immigrant from Polotzk. What would the sophisti- 



THE PROMISED LAND 87 

cated sight-seer say about Union Place, off Wall 
Street, where my new home waited for me ? He would 
say that it is no place at all, but a short box of an 
alley. Two rows of three-story tenements are its sides, 
a stingy strip of sky is its lid, a littered pavement is 
the floor, and a narrow mouth its exit. 

But I saw a very different picture on my introduc- 
tion to Union Place. I saw two imposing rows of brick 
buildings, loftier than any dwelling I had ever lived 
in. Brick was even on the ground for me to tread on, 
instead of common earth or boards. Many friendly 
windows stood open, filled with uncovered heads of 
women and children. I thought the people were inter- 
ested in us, which was very neighborly. I looked up 
to the topmost row of windows, and my eyes were 
filled with the May blue of an American sky ! 

In our days of affluence in Kussia we had been ac- 
customed to upholstered parlors, embroidered linen, 
silver spoons and candlesticks, goblets of gold, kitchen 
shelves shining with copper and brass. We had feather- 
beds heaped halfway to the ceiling ; we had clothes 
presses dusky with velvet and silk and fine woolen. 
The three small rooms into which my father now 
ushered us, up one flight of stairs, contained only the 
necessar}'' beds, with lean mattresses ; a few wooden 
chairs ; a table or two ; a mysterious iron structure, 
which later turned out to be a stove ; a couple of un- 
ornamental kerosene lamps ; and a scanty array of 
cooking-utensils and crockery. And yet we were all 
impressed with our new home and its furniture. It 
was not only because we had just passed through our 
seven lean years, cooking in earthern vessels, eating 
black bread on holidays and wearing cotton ; it was 
chiefly because these wooden chairs and tin pans were 



88 MARY ANTIN 

American chairs and pans that they shone glorious in 
our eyes. And if there was anything lacking for com- 
fort or decoration we expected it to be presently sup- 
plied — at least, we children did. Perhaps my mother 
alone, of us newcomers, appreciated the shahbiness of 
the little apartment,, and realized that for her there 
was as yet no laying down of the burden of poverty. 

Our initiation into American ways began with the 
first step on the new soil. My father found occasion to 
instruct or correct us even on the way from the pier 
to Wall Street, which journey we made crowded to- 
gether in a rickety cab. He told us not to lean out of 
the windows, not to point, and explained the word 
"greenhorn." We did not want to be " greenhorns," 
and gave the strictest attention to my father's in- 
structions. I do not know when my parents found 
opportunity to review together the history of Polotzk 
in the three years past, for we children had no patience 
with the subject ; my mother's narrative was constantly 
interrupted by irrelevant questions, interjections, and 
explanations. 

The first meal was an object lesson of much variety. 
My father produced several kinds of food, ready to 
eat, without any cooking, from little tin cans that had 
printing all over them. He attempted to introduce us 
to a queer, slippery kind of fruit, which he called 
" banana," but had to give it up for the time being. 
After the meal, he had better luck with a curious piece 
of furniture on runners, which he called " rocking- 
chair." There were five of us newcomers, and we found 
five different ways of getting into the American ma- 
chine of perpetual motion, and as many ways of get- 
ting out of it. One born and bred to the use of a 
rocking-chair cannot imagine how ludicrous people 



THE PROMISED LAND 89 

can make themselves when attempting to use it for 
the first time. We laughed immoderately over our 
various experiments with the novelty, which was a 
wholesome way of letting off steam after the unusual 
excitement of the day. 

In our flat we did not think of such a thing as stor- 
ing the coal in the bathtub. There was no bathtub. 
So in the evening of the first day my father conducted 
us to the public baths. As we moved along in a little 
procession, I was delighted with the illumination of 
the streets. So many lamps, and they burned until 
morning, my father said, and so people did not need 
to carry lanterns. In America, then, everything was 
free, as we had heard in Russia. Light was free ; the 
streets were as bright as a synagogue on a holy day. 
Music was free; we had been serenaded, to our gaping 
delight, by a brass band of many pieces, soon after our 
installation on Union Place. 

Education was free. That subject my father had 
written about repeatedly, as comprising his chief hope 
for us children, the essence of American opportunity, 
the treasure that no thief could touch, not even mis- 
fortune or poverty. It was the one thing that he was 
able to promise us when he sent for us ; surer, safer 
than bread or shelter. On our second day I was thrilled 
with the realization of what this freedom of education 
meant. A little girl from across the alley came and 
offered to conduct us to school. My father was out, 
but we five between us had a few words of English by 
this time. We knew the word school. We understood. 
This child, who had never seen us till yesterday, who 
could not pronounce our names, who was not much 
better dressed than we, was able to offer us the free- 
dom of the schools of Boston ! No application made, 



90 MARY ANTIN 

no questions asked, no examinations, rulings, exclu- 
sions ; no machinations, no fees. The doors stood open 
for every one of us. The smallest child could show us 
the way. 

This incident impressed me more than anything I 
had heard in advance of the freedom of education in 
America. It was a concrete proof — almost the thing 
itself. One had to experience it to understand it. 

It was a great disappointment to be told by my 
father that we were not to enter upon our school career 
at once. It was too near the end of the term, he said, 
and we were going to move to Crescent Beach in a 
week or so. We had to wait until the opening of the 
schools in September. What a loss of precious time 
— from May till September ! 

Not that the time was really lost. Even the inter- 
val on Union Place was crowded with lessons and ex- 
periences. We had to visit the stores and be dressed 
from head to foot in American clothing ; we had to 
learn the mysteries of the iron stove, the washboard, 
and the speaking-tube ; we had to learn to trade with 
the fruit peddler through the window, and not to be 
afraid of the policeman ; and, above all, we had to 
learn English. 

The kind people who assisted us in these important 
matters form a group by themselves in the gallery of 
my friends. If I had never seen them from those early 
days till now, I should still have remembered them 
with gratitude. When I enumerate the long list of 
American teachers, I must begin with those who came 
to us on Wall Street and taught us our first steps. To 
my mother, in her perplexity over the cookstove, the 
woman who showed her how to make the fire was an 
angel of deliverance. A fairy godmother to us chil- 



THE PROMISED LAND 91 

dren was she who led us to a wonderful country called 
" uptown," where in a dazzlingly beautiful palace 
called a " department store," we exchanged our hate- 
ful homemade European costumes, which pointed us 
out as "greenhorns " to the children on the street, for 
real American machine-made garments, and issued 
forth glorified in each other's eyes. 

With our despised immigrant clothing we shed also 
our impossible Hebrew names. A committee of our 
friends, several years ahead of us in American experi- 
ence, put their heads together and concocted American 
names for us all. Those of our real names that had 
no pleasing American equivalents they ruthlessly dis- 
carded, content if they retained the initials. My 
mother, possessing a name that was not easily translat- 
able, was punished with the undignified nickname of 
Annie. Fetchke, Joseph, and Deborah issued as Frieda, 
Joseph, and Dora, respectively. As for poor me, I 
was simply cheated. The name they gave me was 
hardly new. My Hebrew name being Maryashe in full, 
Mashke for short, Russianized into Marya QMar-yct) 
my friends said that it would hold good in English as 
Mary ; which was very disappointing, as I longed to 
possess a strange-sounding American name like the 
others. 

I am forgetting the consolation I had, in this matter 
of names, from the use of my surname, which I have 
had no occasion to mention until now. I found on my 
arrival that my father was " Mr. Antin " on the slight- 
est provocation, and not, as in Polotzk, on state occa- 
sions alone. And so I was " Mary Antin," and I felt 
very important to answer to such a dignified title. It 
was just like America that even plain people should 
wear their surnames on week days. 



92 MARY ANTIN 

As a family we were so diligent under instruction, 
so adaptable, and so clever in hiding our deficiencies, 
that when we made the journey to Crescent Beach, 
in the wake of our small wagon-load of household 
goods, my father had very little occasion to admonish 
us on the way, and I am sure he was not ashamed of us. 
So much we had achieved toward our Americaniza- 
tion during the two weeks since our landing. 

Crescent Beach is a name that is printed in very 
small type on the maps of the environs of Boston, but 
a life-size strip of sand curves from Winthrop to 
Lynn ; and that is historic ground in the annals of 
my family. The place is now a popular resort for 
holiday crowds, and is famous under the name of Re- 
vere Beach. When the reunited Antins made their 
stand there, however, there were no boulevards, no 
stately bath-houses, no hotels, no gaudy amusement 
places, no illuminations, no showmen, no tawdry rab- 
ble. There was only the bright clean sweep of sand, the 
summer sea, and the summer sky. At high tide the 
whole Atlantic rushed in, tossing the seaweeds in his 
mane ; at low tide he rushed out, growling and gnash- 
ing his granite teeth. Between tides a baby might 
play on the beach, digging with pebbles and shells, 
till it lay asleep on the sand. The whole sun shone by 
day, troops of stars by night, and the great moon in 
its season. 

Into this grand cycle of the seaside day I came 
to live and learn and play. A few people came with 
me, as I have already intimated ; but the main thing 
was that /came to live on the edge of the sea — I, who 
had spent my life inland, believing that the great 
waters of the world were spread out before me in the 
Dvina. My idea of the human world had grown 



THE PROMISED LAND 93 

enormously during the long journey ; my idea of the 
earth had expanded with every day at sea , my idea 
of the world outside the earth now budded and 
swelled during my prolonged experience of the wide 
and unobstructed heavens. 

Not that I got any inkling of the conception of a 
multiple world. I had had no lessons in cosmogony, 
and I had no spontaneous revelation of the true posi- 
tion of the earth in the universe. For me, as for my 
fathers, the sun set and rose, and I did not feel the 
earth rushing through space. But I lay stretched out 
in the sun, my eyes level with the sea, till I seemed 
to be absorbed bodily by the very materials of the 
world around me ; till I could not feel my hand as 
separate from the warm sand in which it was buried. 
Or I crouched on the beach at full moon, wondering, 
wondering, between the two splendors of the sky and 
the sea. Or I ran out to meet the incoming storm, 
my face full in the wind, my being a-tingle with an 
awesome delight to the tips of my fog-matted locks 
flying behind ; and stood clinging to some stake or 
upturned boat, shaken by the roar and rumble of the 
waves. So clinging, I pretended that I was in danger, 
and was deliciously frightened ; I held on with both 
hands, and shook my head, exulting in the tumult 
around me, equally ready to laugh or sob. Or else I 
sat, on the stillest days, with my back to the sea, not 
looking at all, but just listening to the rustle of the 
waves on the sand ; not thinking at all, but just 
breathing with the sea. 

Thus courting the influence of sea and sky and 
variable weather, I was bound to have dreams, hints, 
imagiiiings. It was no more than this, perhaps : that 
the world as I knew it was not large enough to con- 



94 MARY ANTIN 

tain all that I saw and felt ; that the thoughts that 
flashed through my mind, not half understood, unre- 
lated to my utterable thoughts, concerned something 
for which I had as yet no name. Every imaginative 
growing child has these flashes of intuition, especially 
one that becomes intimate with some one aspect of 
nature. With me it was the growing time, that idle 
summer by the sea, and I grew all the faster because 
I had been so cramped before. My mind, too, had so 
recently been worked upon by the impressive experi- 
ence of a change of country that I was more than 
commonly alive to impressions, which are the seeds 
of ideas. 

Let no one suppose that I spent my time entirely, 
or even chiefly, in inspired solitude. By far the best 
part of my day was spent in play — frank, hearty, 
boisterous play, such as comes natural to American 
children. In Polotzk I had already begun to be con- 
sidered too old for play, excepting set games or or- 
ganized frolics. Here I found myself included with 
children who still played, and I willingly returned to 
childhood. There were plenty of playfellows. My 
father's energetic little partner had a little wife and a 
large family. He kept them in the little cottage next 
to ours ; and that the shanty survived the tumultuous 
presence of that brood is a wonder to me to-day. The 
young Wilners included an assortment of boys, girls, 
and twins, of every possible variety of age, size, dis- 
position, and sex. They swarmed in and out of the 
cottage all day long, wearing the door-sill hollow, and 
trampling the ground to powder. They swung out of 
windows like monkeys, slid up the roof like flies, and 
shot out of trees like fowls. Even a small person like 
me could n't go anywhere without being run over by a 



THE PROMISED LAND 95 

Wilner ; and I could never tell which Wilner it was 
because none of them ever stood still long enough to 
be identified ; and also because I suspected that they 
were in the habit of interchanging conspicuous arti- 
cles of clothing, which was very confusing. 

You would suppose that the little mother must have 
been utterly lost, bewildered, trodden down in this 
horde of urchins ; but you are mistaken. Mrs. Wilner 
was a positively majestic little person. She ruled her 
brood with the utmost coolness and strictness. She 
had even the biggest boy under her thumb, frequently 
under her palm. If they enjoyed the wildest freedom 
outdoors, indoors the young Wilners lived by the 
clock. And so at five o'clock in the evening, on seven 
days in the week, my father's partner's children could 
be seen in two long rows around the supper table. 
You could tell them apart on this occasion, because 
they all had their faces washed. And this is the time 
to count them ; there are twelve little Wilners at table. 

I managed to retain my identity in this multitude 
somehow, and while I was very much impressed with 
their numbers, I even dared to pick and choose my 
friends among the Wilners. One or two of the smaller 
boys I liked best of all, for a game of hide-and-seek 
or a frolic on the beach. We played in the water like 
ducks, never taking the trouble to get dry. One day I 
waded out with one of the boys, to see which of us 
dared go farthest. The tide was extremely low, and 
we had not wet our knees when we began to look back 
to see if familiar objects were still in sight. I thought 
we had been wading for hours, and still the water was 
so shallow and quiet. My companion was marching 
straight ahead, so I did the same. Suddenly a swell 
lifted us almost off our feet, and we clutched at each 



96 MARY ANTIN 

other simultaneously. There was a lesser swell, and 
little waves began to run, and a sigh went up from the 
sea. The tide was turning — perhaps a storm was on 
the way — and we were miles, dreadful miles from dry 
land. 

Boy and girl turned without a word, four deter- 
mined bare legs ploughing through the water, four 
scared eyes straining toward the land'. Through an 
eternity of toil and fear they kept dumbly on, death 
at their heels, pride still in their hearts. At last they 
reach high- water mark — six hours before full tide. 

Each has seen the other afraid, and each rejoices in 
the knowledge. But only the boy is sure of his tongue. 

" You was scared, war n't you ? " he taunts. 

The girl understands so much, and is able to reply : 

"You can schwimmen, I not." 

"Betcher life I can schwimmen," the other mocks. 

And the girl walks off, angry and hurt. 

" An' I can walk on my hands," the tormentor calls 
after her. " Say, you greenhorn, why don'tcher look ?" 

The girl keeps straight on, vowing that she would 
never walk with that rude boy again, neither by land 
nor sea, not even though the waters should part at his 
bidding. 

I am forgetting the more serious business which had 
brought us to Crescent Beach. While we children dis- 
ported ourselves like mermaids and mermen in the 
surf, our respective fathers dispensed cold lemonade, 
hot peanuts, and pink popcorn, and piled up our re- 
spective fortunes, nickel by nickel, penny by penny. 
I was very proud of my connection with the public life 
of the beach. I admired greatly our shining soda foun- 
tain, the rows of sparkling glasses, the pyramids of 
oranges, the sausage chains, the neat white counter, 



THE PROMISED LAND 97 

and the bright array of tin spoons. It seemed to me 
that none of the other refreshment stands on the 
beach — there were a few — were half so attractive as 
ours. I thought my father looked very well in a long 
white apron and shirt sleeves. He dished out ice 
cream with enthusiasm, so I supposed he was getting 
rich. It never occurred to me to compare his present 
occupation with the position for which he had been 
originally destined ; or if I thought about it, I was 
just as well content, for by this time I had by heart 
my father's saying, "America is not Polotzk." All 
occupations were respectable, all men were equal, in 
America. 

If I admired the soda fountain and the sausage 
chains, I almost worshipped the partner, Mr. Wilner. 
I was content to stand for an hour at a time watching 
him make potato chips. In his cook's cap and apron, 
with a ladle in his hand and a smile on his face, he 
moved about with the greatest agility, whisking his 
raw materials out of nowhere, dipping into his bub- 
bling kettle with a flourish, and bringing forth the 
finished product with a caper. Such potato chips were 
not to be had anywhere else on Crescent Beach. Thin 
as tissue paper, crisp as dry snow, and salt as the sea 
— such thirst-producing, lemonade-selling, nickel- 
bringing potato chips only Mr. Wilner could make. 
On holidays, when dozens of family parties came out 
by every train from town, he could hardly keep up with 
the demand for his potato chips. And with a waiting 
crowd around him our partner was at his best. He 
was as voluble as he was skilful, and as witty as he 
was voluble ; at least so I guessed from the laughter 
that frequently drowned his voice. I could not under- 
stand his jokes, but if I could get near enough to 



98 MARY ANTIN 

watch his lips and his smile and his merry eyes, I was 
happy. That any one could talk so fast, and in Eng- 
lish, was marvel enough, but that this prodigy should 
belong to our establishment was a fact to thrill me. I 
had never seen anything like Mr. Wilner, except a 
wedding jester ; but then he spoke common Yiddish. 
So proud was I of the talent and good taste displayed 
at our stand that if my father beckoned to me in the 
crowd and sent me on an errand, I hoped the people 
noticed that I, too, was connected with the establish- 
ment. 

And all this splendor and glory and distinction 
came to a sudden end. There was some trouble about 
a license — some fee or fine — there was a storm in 
the night that damaged the soda fountain and other 
fixtures — there was talk and consultation between 
the houses of Antin and Wilner — and the promising 
partnership was dissolved. No more would the merry 
partner gather the crowd on the beach ; no more 
would the twelve young Wilners gambol like mermen 
and mermaids in the surf. And the less numerous 
tribe of Antin must also say farewell to the jolly sea- 
side life ; for men in such humble business as my 
father's carry their families, along with their other 
earthly goods, wherever they go, after the manner of 
the gypsies. We had driven a feeble stake into the sand. 
The jealous Atlantic, in conspiracy with the Sunday 
law, had torn it out. We must seek our luck elsewhere. 

In Polotzk we had supposed that " America " was 
practically synonymous with " Boston." When we 
landed in Boston, the horizon was pushed back, and 
we annexed Crescent Beach. And now, espying other 
lands of promise, we took possession of the province 
of Chelsea, in the name of our necessity. 



THE PROMISED LAND 99 

In Chelsea, as In Boston, we made our stand In the 
wrong end of the town. Arlington Street was In- 
habited by poor Jews, poor Negroes, and a sprinkling of 
poor Irish. The side streets leading from it were occu- 
pied by more poor Jews and Negroes. It was a proper 
locality for a man without capital to do business. My 
father rented a tenement with a store in the basement. 
He put in a few barrels of flour and of sugar, a few 
boxes of crackers, a few gallons of kerosene, an as- 
sortment of soap of the " save the coupon " brands ; 
in the cellar a few barrels of potatoes, and a pyramid 
of kindling-wood ; In the showcase, an alluring dis- 
play of penny candy. He put out his sign, with a 
gilt-lettered warning of " Strictly Cash," and pro- 
ceeded to give credit indiscriminately. That was the 
regular way to do business on Arlington Street. My 
father, in his three years' apprenticeship, had learned 
the tricks of many trades. He knew when and how to 
" bluff." The legend of " Strictly Cash " was a pro- 
tection against notoriously irresponsible customers ; 
while none of the " good " customers, who had a rec- 
ord for paying regularly on Saturday, hesitated to 
enter the store with empty purses. 

If my father knew the tricks of the trade, my 
mother could be counted on to throw all her talent 
and tact into the business. Of course she had no 
English yet, but as she could perform the acts of 
weighing, measuring, and mental computation of frac- 
tions mechanically, she was able to give her whole 
attention to the dark mysteries of the language, as 
intercourse with her customers gave her opportunity. 
In this she made such rapid progress that she soon 
lost all sense of disadvantage, and conducted herself 
behind the counter very much as If she were back In 



100 MARY ANTIN 

her old store in Polotzk. It was far more cozy than 
Polotzk — at least, so it seemed to me ; for behind the 
store was the kitchen, where, in the intervals of slack 
trade, she did her cooking and washing. Arlington 
Street customers were used to waiting while the store- 
keeper salted the soup or rescued a loaf from the oven. 

Once more Fortune favored my family with a thin 
little smile, and my father, in reply to a friendly in- 
quiry, would say, " One makes a living," with a shrug 
of the shoulders that added " but nothing to boast 
of." It was characteristic of my attitude toward 
bread-and-butter matters that this contented me, and 
I felt free to devote myself to the conquest of my new 
world. Looking back to those critical first years, I 
see myself always behaving like a child let loose in a 
garden to play and dig and chase the butterflies. Oc- 
casionally, indeed, I was stung by the wasp of family 
trouble ; but I knew a healing ointment — my faith 
in America. My father had come to America to make 
a living. America, which was free and fair and kind, 
must presently yield him what he sought. I had come 
to America to see a new world, and I followed my own 
ends with the utmost assiduity ; only, as I ran out to 
explore, I would look back to see if my house were 
in order behind me — if my family still kept its head 
above water. 

In after years, when I passed as an American 
among Americans, if I was suddenly made aware of 
the past that lay forgotten, — if a letter from Russia, 
or a paragraph in the newspaper, or a conversation 
overheard in the street-car, suddenly reminded me of 
what I might have been, — I thought it miracle 
enough that I, Mashke, the granddaughter of Raphael 
the Russian, born to a humble destiny, should be at 



THE PROMISED LAND 101 

home in an American metropolis, be free to fashion 
my own life, and should dream my dreams in English 
phrases. But in the beginning my admiration was 
spent on more concrete embodiments of the splendors 
of America ; such as fine houses, gay shops, electric 
engines and apparatus, public buildings, illuminations, 
and parades. My early letters to my Russian friends 
were filled with boastful descriptions of these glories 
of my new country. No native citizen of Chelsea 
took such pride and delight in its institutions as I 
did. It required no fife and drum corps, no Fourth of 
July procession, to set me tingling with patriotism. 
Even the common agents and instruments of muni- 
cipal life, such as the letter carrier and the fire en- 
gines, I regarded with a measure of respect. I know 
what I thought of people who said that Chelsea was a 
very small, dull, unaspiring town, with no discernible 
excuse for a separate name or existence. 

The apex of my civic pride and personal content- 
ment was reached on the bright September morning 
when I entered the public school. That day I must al- 
ways remember, even if I live to be so old that I can- 
not tell my name. To most people their first day at 
school is a memorable occasion. In my case the im- 
portance of the day was a hundred times magnified, 
on account of the years I had waited, the road I had 
come, and the conscious ambitions I entertained. 

I am wearily aware that I am speaking in extreme 
figures, in superlatives. I wish I knew some other 
way to render the mental life of the immigrant child 
of reasoning age. I may have been ever so much an 
exception in acuteness of observation, powers of com- 
parison, and abnormal self-consciousness ; none the 
less were my thoughts and conduct typical of the atti- 



102 MARY ANTIN 

tude of the intelligent immigrant child toward Ameri- 
can institutions. And what the child thinks and feels 
is a reflection of the hopes, desires, purposes of the 
parent who brought him overseas, no matter how pre- 
cocious and independent the child may be. Your im- 
migrant inspectors will tell you what poverty the 
foreigner brings in his baggage, what want in his 
pockets. Let the overgrown boy of twelve, reverently 
drawing his letters in the baby class, testify to the 
noble dreams and high ideals that may be hidden be- 
neath the greasy caftan of the immigrant. Speaking 
for the Jews, at least, I know I am safe in inviting 
such an investigation. 

Who were my companions on my first day at school ? 
Whose hand was in mine, as I stood, overcome with 
awe, by the teacher's desk, and whispered my name as 
my father prompted ? Was it Frieda's steady, capable 
hand ? Was it her loyal heart that throbbed, beat for 
beat with mine, as it had done through all our child- 
ish adventures? Frieda's heart did throb that day, 
but not with my emotions. My heart pulsed with joy 
and pride and ambition ; in her heart longing fought 
with abnegation. For I was led to the schoolroom, 
with its sunshine and its singing and the teacher's 
cheery smile ; while she was led to the workshop, with 
its foul air, care-lined faces, and the foreman's stern 
command. Our going to school was the fulfilment of 
my father's best promises to us, and Frieda's share in 
it was to fashion and fit the calico frocks in which the 
baby sister and I made our first appearance in a pub- 
lic schoolroom. 

I remember to this day the gray pattern of the calico, 
so affectionately did I regard it as it hung upon the 
wall — my consecration robe awaiting the beatific day. 



THE PROMISED LAND 103 

And Frieda, I am sure, remembers it, too, so long- 
ingly did she regard it as the crisp, starchy breadths 
of it slid between her fingers. But whatever were her 
longings, she said nothing of them ; she bent over the 
sewing-machine humming an Old-World melody. In 
every straight, smooth seam, perhaps, she tucked away 
some lingering impulse of childhood ; but she matched 
the scrolls and flowers with the utmost care. If a sud- 
den shock of rebellion made her straighten up for an 
instant, the next instant she was bending to adjust a 
ruffle to the best advantage. And when the momen- 
tous day arrived, and the little sister and I stood up 
to be arrayed, it was Frieda herself who patted and 
smoothed my stiff new calico ; who made me turn round 
and round, to see that I was perfect ; who stooped to 
pull out a disfiguring basting- thread. If there was any- 
thing in her heart besides sisterly love and pride and 
good-will, as we parted that morning, it was a sense 
of loss and a woman's acquiescence in her fate ; for we 
had been close friends, and now our ways would lie 
apart. Longing she felt, but no envy. She did not 
grudge me what she was denied. Until that morning 
we had been children together, but now, at the fiat of 
her destiny she became a woman, with all a woman's 
cares ; whilst I, so little younger than she, was bidden 
to dance at the May festival of untroubled childhood. 
I wish, for my comfort, that I could say that I had 
some notion of the difference in our lots, some sense 
of the injustice to her, oE the indulgence to me. I wish 
I could even say that I gave serious thought to the 
matter. There had always been a distinction between 
us rather out of proportion to the difference in our 
years. Her good health and domestic instincts had 
made it natural for her to become my mother's right 



104 MARY ANTIN 

hand, in the years preceding the emigration, when 
there were no more servants or dependents. Then 
there was the family tradition that Mary was the 
quicker, the brighter of the two, and that hers could 
be no common lot. Frieda was relied upon for help, 
and her sister for glory. And when I failed as a mil- 
liner's apprentice, while Frieda made excellent prog- 
ress at the dressmaker's, our fates, indeed, were sealed. 
It was understood, even before we reached Boston, 
that she would go to work and I to school. In view of 
the family prejudices, it was the inevitable course. No 
injustice was intended. My father sent us hand in 
hand to school, before he had ever thought of America. 
If, in America, he had been able to support his family 
unaided, it would have been the culmination of his best 
hopes to see all his children at school, with equal ad- 
vantages at home. But when he had done his best, and 
was still unable to provide even bread and shelter for 
us all, he was compelled to make us children self- 
supporting as fast as it was practicable. There was no 
choosing possible ; Frieda was the oldest, the strongest, 
the best prepared, and the only one who was of legal 
age to be put to work. 

My father has nothing to answer for. He divided 
the world between his children in accordance with 
the laws of the country and the compulsion of his cir- 
cumstances. I have no need of defending him. It is 
myself that I would like to defend, and I cannot. 
I remember that I accepted the arrangements made 
for my sister and me without much reflection, and 
everything that was planned for my advantage I took 
as a matter of course. I was no heartless monster, but a 
decidedly self-centered child. If my sister had seemed 
unhappy it would have troubled me ; but I am ashamed 



THE PROMISED LAND 105 

to recall that I did not consider how little it was that 
contented her. I was so preoccupied with my own hap- 
piness that I did not half perceive the splendid devo- 
tion of her attitude towards me, the sweetness of her 
joy in my good luck. She not only stood by approv- 
ingly when I was helped to everything ; she cheerfully 
waited on me herself. And I took everything from her 
hand as if it were my due. 

The two of us stood a moment in the doorway of the 
tenement house on Arlington Street, that wonderful 
September morning when I first went to school. It was 
I that ran away, on winged feet of joy and expecta- 
tion ; it was she whose feet were bound in the tread- 
mill of daily toil. And I was so blind that I did not 
see that the glory lay on her, and not on me. 

Father himself conducted us to school. He would 
not have delegated that mission to the President of the 
United States. He had awaited the day with impa- 
tience equal to mine, and the visions he saw as he 
hurried us over the sun-flecked pavements transcended 
all my dreams. Almost his first act on landing on 
American soil, three years before, had been his applica- 
tion for naturalization. He had taken the remaining 
steps in the process with eager promptness, and at the 
earliest moment allowed by the law, he became a citizen 
of the United States. It is true that he had left home 
in search of bread for his hungry family, but he went 
blessing the necessity that drove him to America. The 
boasted freedom of the New World meant to him far 
more than the right to reside, travel, and work wher- 
ever he pleased ; it meant the freedom to speak his 
thoughts, to throw off the shackles of superstition, to 
test his own fate, unhindered by political or religious 



106 MARY ANTIN 

tyranny. He was only a young man when he landed 
— thirty-two ; and most of his life he had been held 
in leading-strings. He was hungry for his untasted 
manhood. 

Three years passed in sordid struggle and disap- 
pointment. He was not prepared to make a living even 
in America, where the day laborer eats wheat instead 
of rye. Apparently the American flag could not pro- 
tect him against the pursuing Nemesis of his limita- 
tions ; he must expiate the sins of his fathers who slept 
across the seas. He had been endowed at birth with 
a poor constitution, a nervous, restless temperament, 
and an abundance of hindering prejudices. In his boy- 
hood his body was starved, that his mind might be 
stuffed with useless learning. In his youth this dearly 
gotten learning was sold, and the price was the bread 
and salt which he had not been trained to earn for 
himself. Under the wedding canopy he was bound for 
life to a girl whose features were still strange to him ; 
and he was bidden to multiply himself, that sacred 
learning might be perpetuated in his sons, to the glory 
of the God of his fathers. All this while he had been 
led about as a creature without a will, a chattel, an 
instrument. In his maturity he awoke, and found him- 
self poor in health, poor in purse, poor in useful knowl- 
edge, and hampered on all sides. At the first nod of 
opportunity he broke away from his prison, and strove 
to atone for his wasted youth by a life of useful labor ; 
while at the same time he sought to lighten the gloom 
of his narrow scholarship by freely partaking of mod- 
ern ideas. But his utmost endeavor still left him far 
from his goal. In business nothing prospered with 
him. Some fault of hand or mind or temperament led 
him to failure where other men found success. Wher- 



THE PROMISED LAND 107 

ever the blame for his disabilities be placed, he reaped 
their bitter fruit. " Give me bread ! " he cried to 
America. " What will you do to earn it?" the chal- 
lenge came back. And he found that he was master 
of no art, of no trade ; that even his precious learning 
was of no avail, because he had only the most anti- 
quated methods of communicating it. 

So in his primary quest he had failed. There was 
left him the compensation of intellectual freedom. 
That he sought to realize in every possible way. He 
had very little opportunity to prosecute his education, 
which, in truth, had never been begun. His struggle 
for a bare living left him no time to take advantage 
of the public evening school ; but he lost nothing of 
what was to be learned through reading, through at- 
tendance at public meetings, through exercising the 
rights of citizenship. Even here he was hindered by 
a natural inability to acquire the English language. 
In time, indeed, he learned to read, to follow a con- 
versation or lecture ; but he never learned to write 
correctly, and his pronunciation remains extremely 
foreign to this day. 

If education, culture, the higher life were shining 
things to be worshipped from afar,' he had still a 
means left whereby he could draw one step nearer to 
them. He could send his children to school, to learn 
all those things that he knew by fame to be desirable. 
The common school, at least, perhaps high school ; for 
one or two, perhaps even college ! His children should 
be students, should fill his house with books and in- 
tellectual company ; and thus he would walk by proxy 
in the Elysian Fields of liberal learning. As for the 
children themselves, he knew no surer way to their 
advancement and happiness. 



lOS MARY ANTIN 

So it was with a heart full of longing and hope that 
my father led us to school on that first day. He took 
long strides in his eagerness, the rest of us running 
and hopping to keep up. 

At last the four of us stood around the teacher's 
desk ; and my father, in his impossible English, gave 
us over in her charge, with some broken word of his 
hopes for us that his swelling heart could no longer 
contain. I venture to say that Miss Nixon was struck 
by something uncommon in the group we made, some- 
thing outside of Semitic features and the abashed man- 
ner of the alien. My little sister was as pretty as a 
doll, with her clear pink-and-white face, short golden 
curls, and eyes like blue violets when you caught them 
looking up. My brother might have been a girl, too, 
with his cherubic contours of face, rich red color, 
glossy black hair, and fine eyebrows.. Whatever secret 
fears were in his heart, remembering his former teach- 
ers, who had taught with the rod, he stood up straight 
and uncringing before the American teacher, his cap 
respectfully doffed. Next to him stood a starved-look- 
ing girl with eyes ready to pop out, and short dark 
curls that would not have made much of a wig for a 
Jewish bride. 

All three children carried themselves rather better 
than the common run of " green " pupils that were 
brought to Miss Nixon. But the figure that challenged 
attention to the group was the tall, straight father, 
with his earnest face and fine forehead, nervous hands 
eloquent in gesture, and a voice full of feeling. This 
foreigner, who brought his children to school as if it 
were an act of consecration, who regarded the teacher 
of the primer class with reverence, who spoke of vi- 
sions, like a man inspired, in a common schoolroom, 



THE PROMISED LAND 109 

was not like other aliens, who brought their children 
in dull obedience to the law ; was not like the native 
fathers, who brought their unmanageable boys, glad 
to be relieved of their care. I think Miss Nixon guessed 
what my father's best English could not convey. I 
think she divined that by the simple act of delivering 
our school certificates to her he took possession of 
America. 

NOTES 

The Promised Land : — The land of freedom and peace 
which the Jews have hoped to attain. See Exodus, 3:8; 6:8; 
Genesis, 12 : 5-7 ; Deuteronomy, 8 : 7-10 ; Hebrews, 11 : 9. 

his three years of probation : — Mary Antin's father had 
spent three years in America before sending back to Russia for 
his family. 

Folotzk : — Pronounced Po'lotsk ; a town in Russia on the 
Dwina River. 

seven lean years : — A reference to the famine in Egypt 
predicted by Joseph, Pharaoh's Hebrew favorite. See Genesis, 40. 

Dvina : — The Diina or Dwina River, in Russia. 

originally destined : — Mr. Antin's parents had intended 
him to be a scholar and teacher. 

Yiddish: — From the German ■word jiidisch, Taeaning Jew- 
ish ; a mixed language made up of German, Hebrew, and Rus- 
sian words. It is generally spoken by Jews. 

Chelsea : — A suburb of Boston. 

Nemesis : — In Greek mythology, a goddess of vengeance 
or punishment for sins and errors. 

the sins of his fathers : — See Exodus, 20 : 5 ; Numbers, 
14 : 18 ; Deuteronomy, 5 : 9. 

Elysian fields : — In Greek thought, the home of the happy 
dead. 

Semitic : — Jewish ; from the name of Shem, the son of 
Noah. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

This selection gives the experience of a Jewish girl who came 
from Polotzk, Russia, to Boston. Read rather slowly, with the 



110 MARY ANTIN 

help of these questions : What is meant by " centuries of re- 
pression " ? Is there no such repression in America ? How is it 
true that the Jew peddler " was born thousands of years before 
the oldest native American " ? What are the educational advan- 
tages of a thickly populated neighborhood ? What is your idea 
of the slums ? Why did the children expect every comfort to 
be supplied ? How much is really free in America ? Is educa- 
tion free ? How does one secure an education in Russia ? How 
are American machine-made garments superior to those made 
by hand in Russia ? Was it a good thing to change the chil- 
dren's names ? What effect does the sea have upon those who 
live near it ? What effect has a great change of environment on 
a growing young person ? What kind of person was Mrs. Wil- 
ner ? What does Mr. Antin mean when he says, " America is 
not Polotzk " ? Are all men equal in America ? Read carefully 
the description of Mr. Wilner : How does the author make it 
vivid and lively ? Why was Mary Antin's first day in school so 
important to her ? Was it fair that Frieda should not go to 
school ? Should an older child be sacrificed for a younger ? 
Should a slow child always give way to a bright one ? What do 
you think of the way in which Mary accepted the situation when 
Frieda had to go to work ? Read carefully what Mary says 
about it. Is it easy to make a living in America ? Why did Mr. 
Antin not succeed in business ? What is meant by " the com- 
pensation of intellectual freedom " ? What did Mr. Antin gain 
from his life in America ? What sort of man was he ? In read- 
ing the selection, what idea do you get of the Russian immi- 
grant ? Of what America means to the poor foreigner ? 



THEME SUBJECTS 

The Foreigners in our Town The New Girl at School 

The " Greenhorn " The Basement Store 

The Immigrant Family A Large Family 

The Peddler Learning to Speak a New Lan- 

Ellis Island guage 

What America Means to the What the Public School can Do 

Foreigner A Russian Brass Shop 

The Statue of Liberty The Factory Girl 

A Russian Woman My Childish Sports 



THE PROMISED LAND 111 

The Refreshment Stand How Children Amuse Them- 

On the Sea Shore selves 

The Popcorn Man A Fragment of My Autobiog- 

A Home in the Tenements raphy 

Earning a Living An Autobiography that I Have 

More about Mary Antin ^ Read 

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING 

The Immigrant Family: — Have you ever seen a family 
that have just arrived in America from a foreign land? Tell 
where you saw them. How many persons were there? What 
were they doing? Describe each person, noting especially any- 
thing odd or picturesque in looks, dress, or behavior. Were they 
carrying anything ? What expressions did they have on their 
faces? Did they seem pleased with their new surroundings ? 
Was anyone trying to help them? Could they speak English? 
If possible, report a few fragments of their conversation. Did 
you have a chance to find out what they thought of America ? 
Do you know what has become of them, and how they are get- 
ting along ? 

A Fragment of my Autobiography : — Did you, as a 
child, move into a strange town, or make a visit in a place 
entirely new to you ? Tell rather briefly why you went and what 
preparations were made. Then give an account of your arrival. 
What was the first thing that impressed you ? What did you do 
or say ? What did the grown people say ? Was there anything 
unusual about the food, or the furniture, or the dress of the 
people? Go on and relate your experiences, telling any incidents 
that you remember. Try to make your reader share the be- 
wilderment and excitement you felt. Did anyone laugh at you, 
or make fun of you, or hurt your feelings ? Were you glad or 
sorry that you had come ? Finish your story by telling of your 
departure from the place, or of your gradually getting used to 
your new surroundings. 

Try to recall some other experiences of your childhood. Write 
them out quite fully, giving space to your feelings as well as to 
the events. 

^ If a copy of The Promised Land is available, some of the stu- 
dents might look up material on this subject. 



112 



MARY ANTIN 



COLLATERAL READINGS 

The Promised Land . . . Mary Antin 
They Who Knock at Our Gates " " 

The Lie " « 

(Atlantic Monthly, August, 1913) 
Children of the Tenements . Jacob A. Riis 
The Making of an American " " " 

On the Trail of the Immigrant E. A. Steiner 
Against the Current . . . " " " 
The Immigrant Tide . 
The Man Farthest Down 
Up from Slavery 
The Woman who Toils 

The Long Day Anonymous 

Old Homes of New Americans F. E. Clark 

Autobiography S. S. McClure 

Autobiography Theodore Roosevelt 



Booker T. Washington 



Marie and Mrs. John "Van Vorst 



A Buckeye Boyhood . . . 
A Tuscan Childhood . . . 
An Indian Boyhood . . . 
When I Was Young . . . 
When I Was a Boy in Japan 
The Story of my Childhood 
The Story of my Boyhood and 

Youth John Muir 

The Biography of a Prairie Girl Eleanor Gates 

Autobiography of a Tomboy Jeanette Gilder 

The One I Knew Best of All 

The Story of my Life 

The Story of a Child 

A New England Girlhood 

Autobiography 

Dream Days 



The Golden Age . 
The Would-be-Goods 
In the Morning Glow 
Chapters from a Life 

Mary Antin : Outlook, 102 



W. H. Venable 
Lisa Cipriani 
Charles Eastman 
Yoshio Markino 
Sakae Shioya 
Clara Barton 



Frances Hodgson Burnett 
Helen Keller 
Pierre Loti 
Lucy Larcom 
Joseph JefPerson 
Kenneth Grahame 



E. Nesbit 

Roy Rolfe Gilson 

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps- Ward 

482, November 2, 1912; 104 : 473, 



June 28, 1913 (Portrait). Bookman, 35 : 419-421, June 1912. 



WARBLE FOR LILAC-TIME 

WALT WHITMAN 

Warble me now for joy of lilac-time (returning in 
reminiscence), 

Sort me, O tongue and lips for Nature's sake, souve- 
nirs of earliest summer, 

Gather the welcome signs (as children with pebbles 
or stringing shells). 

Put in April and May, the hylas croaking in the ponds, 
the elastic air, 

Bees, butterflies, the sparrow with its simple notes. 

Blue-bird and darting swallow, nor forget the high- 
hole flashing his golden wings, 

The tranquil sunny haze, the clinging smoke, the vapor, 

Shimmer of waters with fish in them, the cerulean 
above. 

All that is jocund and sparkling, the brooks running, 

The maple woods, the crisp February days, and the 
sugar-making. 

The robin where he hops, bright-eyed, brown-breasted. 

With musical clear call at sunrise and again at sunset. 

Or flitting among the trees of the apple-orchard, 
building the nest of his mate, 

The melted snow of March, the willow sending forth 
its yellow-green sprouts. 

For spring-time is here ! the summer is here ! and what 
is this in it and from it ? 

Thou, soul, unloosen'd — the restlessness after I know 
not what ; 

Come, let us lag here no longer, let us be up and away ! 



114 WALT WHITMAN 

O if one could but fly like a bird ! 

O to escape, to sail forth as in a ship ! 

To glide with thee, O soul, o'er all, in all, as a ship o'er 
the waters ; 

Gathering these hints, the preludes, the blue sky, the 
grass, the morning drops of dew, 

The lilac-scent, the bushes with dark-green heart- 
shaped leaves. 

Wood-violets, the little delicate pale blossoms called 
innocence, 

Samples and sorts not for themselves alone, but for 
their atmosphere. 

To grace the bush I love — to sing with the birds, 

A warble for joy of lilac-time, returning in reminis- 
cence. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

What is the meaning of " sort me " ? Why jumble all these 
signs of summer together ? Does one naturally think in an or- 
derly way when recalling the details of spring or summer ? Can 
you think of any important points that the author has left out ? 
Is samples a poetic word ? What is meant by the line " not for 
themselves alone," etc. ? Note the sound-words in the poem : 
What is their value here ? Read the lines slowly to yourself, or 
have some one read them aloud, and see how many of them sug- 
gest little pictures. Note the punctuation : Do you approve ? Is 
this your idea of poetry ? What is poetry ? Would this be better 
if it were in the full form of verse ? Can you see why the critics 
have disagreed over Whitman's poetry ? 



WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN'D 
ASTRONOMER 

WALT WHITMAN 

When I heard the learn'd astronomer, 

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in cohimns 

before me. 
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, 

divide and measure them. 
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured 

with much applause in the lecture-room, 
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick. 
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself. 
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, 
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

Why did the listener become tired of the lecturer who spoke 
with much applause ? What did he learn from the stars when he 
was alone out of doors ? Does he not think the study of astron- 
omy worth while ? What would be his feeling toward other 
scientific studies ? What do you get out of this poem ? What 
do you think of the way in which it is written ? 



VIGIL STRANGE I KEPT ON THE 
FIELD ONE NIGHT 

WALT WHITMAN 

Vigil strange I kept on the field one night ; 

When you my son and my comrade dropt at my side 

that day, 
One look I but gave which your dear eyes return'd 

with a look I shall never forget, 
One touch of your hand to mine, O boy, reach'd up 

as you lay on the ground. 
Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested 

battle, 
Till late in the night reliev'd to the place at last again 

I made my way, 
Found you in death so cold dear comrade, found your 

body, son of responding kisses (never again on 

earth responding), 
Bared your face in the starlight, curious the scene, cool 

blew the moderate night-wind. 
Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around 

me the battle-field spreading. 
Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the fragrant 

silent night. 
But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh, long, 

long I gazed, 
Then on the earth partially reclining sat by your 

side leaning my chin in my hands. 
Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with 

you dearest comrade — not a tear, not a word, 



VIGIL STRANGE I KEPT ON THE FIELD 117 

Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son 

and my soldier, 
As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones up- 
ward stole. 
Vigil final for you brave boy, (I could not save you, 

swift was your death, 
I faithfully loved you and cared for you living, I think 

we shall surely meet again,) 
Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the 

dawn appear'd. 
My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop'd well 

his form, 
Folded the blanket well, tucked it carefully over head 

and caref ullj^ under feet, 
And there and then and bathed by the rising sun, my son 

in his grave, in his rude-dug grave I deposited, 
Ending ray strange vigil with that, vigil of night and 

battlefield dim, 
Vigil for boy of responding kisses (never again on 

earth responding). 
Vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil I never forget, 

how as day brighten'd, 
I rose from the chill ground and folded my soldier 

well in his blanket. 
And buried him where he fell. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

What is a vigil ? Was Whitman ever in battle ? Does he 
mean himself speaking ? Was the boy really his son ? Is the 
man's calmness a sign that he does not care ? Why does he call 
the vigil " wondrous " and " sweet " ? What does he think about 
the next life ? Read the poem over slowly and thoughtfully to 
yourself, or aloud to some one : How does it make you feel ? 

Can you see any reason for calling Whitman a great poet ? 



118 WALT WHITMAN 

Has he broadened your idea of what poetry may be ? Read, if 
possible, in John Burroughs's book on Whitman, pages 48-53. 

EXERCISES 

Re-read the Warble for Lilac-Time. Can you write of the 
signs of fall, in somewhat the same way ? Choose the most 
beautiful and the most important characteristics that you can 
think of. Try to use color-words and sound-words so that they 
make your composition vivid and musical. Compare the Warble 
for Lilac-Time with the first lines of Chaucer's Prologue to the 
Canterbury Tales. With Lowell's How Spring Came in New Eng- 
land. 

THEME SUBJECTS 

A Walk in the Woods The Orchard in Spring 

A Spring Day On a Farm in Early Summer 

iSugar-Making A Walk on a Summer Night 

My Flower Garden Waiting for Morning 

The Garden in LUac Time The Stars 

Walt Whitman and his Poetry 

COLLATERAL READINGS 

Poems by Whitman suitable for class reading : — 

On the Beach at Night I Hear It was Charged against 

Bivouac on a Mountain Side Me 

To a Locomotive in Winter A Sight in Camp 

A Farm Picture By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame 

The Runner Song of the Broad-Axe 

A Child said What is the grass ? (from A Song of Myself ) 

The Rolling Earth (Selections from Whitman) 

W.R.Browne (Ed.) 

The Life of Walt Whitman H. B. Binns 

Walt Whitman John Burroughs 

A Visit to Walt Whitman (Portraits) . John Johnston 
Walt Whitman the Man (Portraits) . . Thomas Donaldson 

Walt Whitman G. R. Carpenter 

Walt Whitman (Portraits) I. H. Piatt 

Whitman Bliss Perry 



VIGIL STRANGE I KEPT ON THE FIELD 119 

Early May in New England (poem) . . Percy Mackaye 

Knee-deep in June J. W. Riley 

Spring Henry Timrod 

Spring Song Bliss Carman 



ODYSSEUS IN PHAEACIA 

TRANSLATED BY GEORGE HERBERT PALMER 

Thus long-tried royal Odysseus slumbered here, 
heavy with sleep and toil ; but Athene went to the 
land and town of the Phaeacians. This people once 
in ancient times lived in the open highlands, near that 
rude folk the Cyclops, who often plundered them, be- 
ing in strength more powerful than they. Moving 
them thence, godlike Nausithoiis, their leader, estab- 
lished them at Scheria, far from toiling men. He ran 
a wall around the town, built houses there, made tem- 
ples for the gods, and laid out farms ; but Nausithoiis 
had met his doom and goneto the house of Hades, and 
Alcinoiis now was reigning, trained in wisdom by the 
gods. To this man's dwelling came the goddess, clear- 
eyed Athene, planning a safe return for brave Odys- 
seus. She hastened to a chamber, richly wrought, in 
which a maid was sleeping, of form and beauty like 
the immortals, Nausicaa, daughter of generous Alci- 
noiis. Near by two damsels, dowered with beauty by 
the Graces, slept by the threshold, one on either hand. 
The shining doors were shut ; but Athene, like a 
breath of air, moved to the maid's couch, stood by her 
head, and thus addressed her, — taking the likeness 
of the daughter of Dymas, the famous seaman, a 
maiden just Nausicaa's age, dear to her heart. Taking 
her guise, thus spoke clear-eyed Athene : — 

" Nausicaa, how did your mother bear a child so 
heedless? Your gay clothes lie uncared for, though 
the wedding time is near, when you must wear fine 



ODYSSEUS m PHAEACIA 121 

clothes yourself and furnish them to those that may 
attend you. From things like these a good repute 
arises, and father and honored mother are made glad. 
Then let us go a-washing at the dawn of day, and I 
will go to help, that you may soon be ready ; for 
really not much longer will you be a maid. Already 
you have for suitors the chief ones of the land 
throughout Phaeacia, where you too were born. Come, 
then, beg your good father early in the morning to 
harness the mules and cart, so as to carry the men's 
clothes, gowns, and bright-hued rugs. Yes, and for 
you yourself it is more decent so than setting forth 
on foot ; the pools are far from the town." 

Saying this, clear-eyed Athene passed away, off to 
Olympus, where they say the dwelling of the gods 
stands fast forever. Never with winds is it disturbed, 
nor by the rain made wet, nor does the snow come 
near ; but everywhere the upper air spreads cloudless, 
and a bright radiance plays over all ; and there the 
blessed gods are happy all their days. Thither now 
came the clear-eyed one, when she had spoken with 
the maid. 

Soon bright-throned morning came, and waked fair- 
robed Nausicaa. She marveled at the dream, and 
hastened through the house to tell it to her parents, 
her dear father and her mother. She found them 
still in-doors : her mother sat by the hearth among 
the waiting- women, spinning sea-purple yarn ; she met 
her father at the door, just going forth to join the 
famous princes at the council, to which the high Phae- 
acians summoned him. So standing close beside him, 
she said to her dear father : — 

" Papa dear, could you not have the wagon har- 
nessed for me, — the high one, with good wheels, — 



122 GEORGE HERBERT PALMER 

to take my nice clothes to the river to be washed, 
which now are lying dirty? Surely for you yourself it 
is but proper, when you are with the first men holding 
councils, that you should wear clean clothing. Five 
good sons too are here at home, — two married, and 
three merry young men still, — and they are always 
wanting to go to the dance wearing fresh clothes. 
And this is all a trouble on my mind." 

Such were her words, for she was shy of naming the 
glad marriage to her father ; but he understood it all, 
and answered thus : 

" I do not grudge the mules, my child, nor anything 
beside. Go ! Quickly shall the servants harness the 
wagon for you, the high one, with good wheels, fitted 
with rack above." 

Saying this, he called to the servants, who gave 
heed. Out in the court they made the easy mule-cart 
ready ; they brought the mules and yoked them to the 
wagon. The maid took from her room her pretty 
clothing, and stowed it in the polished wagon ; her 
mother put in a chest food the maid liked, of every 
kind, put dainties in, and poured some wine into a 
goat-skin bottle, — the maid, meanwhile, had got into 
the wagon, — and gave her in a golden flask some 
liquid oil, that she might bathe and anoint herself, 
she and the waiting-women. Nausicaa took the whip 
and the bright reins, and cracked the whip to start. 
There was a clatter of the mules, and steadily they 
pulled, drawing the clothing and the maid, — yet not 
alone ; beside her went the waiting-women too. 

When now they came to the fair river's current, 
where the pools were always full, — for in abundance 
clear water bubbles from beneath to cleanse the foul- 
est stains, — they turned the mules loose from the 



ODYSSEUS IN PHAEACIA 123 

wagon, and let them stray along the eddying stream, 
to crop the honeyed pasturage. Then from the wagon 
they took the clothing in their arms, carried it into 
the dark water, and stamped it in the pits with rivalry 
in speed. And after they had washed and cleansed 
it of all stains, they spread it carefully along the shore, 
just where the waves washed up the pebbles on the 
beach. Then bathing and anointing with the oil, 
they presently took dinner on the river bank and 
waited for the clothes to dry in the sunshine. And 
when they were refreshed with food, the maids and 
she, they then began to play at ball, throwing their 
wimples ojff . White-armed Nausicaa led their sport ; 
and as the huntress Artemis goes down a mountain, 
down long Taygetus or Erymanthus, exulting in the 
boars and the swift deer, while round her sport the 
woodland nymphs, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, 
and glad is Leto's heart, for all the rest her child 
o'ertops by head and brow, and easily marked is she, 
though all are fair ; so did this virgin pure excel her 
women. 

But when Nausicaa thought to turn toward home 
once more, to yoke the mules and fold up the clean 
clothes, then a new plan the goddess formed, clear- 
eyed Athene ; for she would have Odysseus wake and 
see the bright-eyed maid, who might to the Phaeacian 
city show the way. Just then the princess tossed the 
ball to one of her women, and missing her it fell in 
the deep eddy. Thereat they screamed aloud. Royal 
Odysseus woke, and sitting up debated in his mind 
and heart : — 

" Alas ! To what men's land am I come now ? Law- 
less and savage are they, with no regard for right, or 
are they kind to strangers and reverent toward the 



124 GEORGE HERBERT PALMER 

gods ? It was as if there came to me tlie delicate voice 
of maids — nymphs, it may be, who haunt the craggy 
peaks of hills, the springs of streams and grassy 
marshes ; or am I now, perhaps, near men of human 
speech? Suppose I make a trial for myself, and see." 

So saying, royal Odysseus crept from the thicket, 
but with his strong hand broke a spray of leaves from 
the close wood, to be a covering round his body for 
his nakedness. He set off like a lion that is bred 
among the hills and trusts its strength ; onward it goes, 
beaten with rain and wind ; its two eyes glare ; and 
now in search of oxen or of sheep it moves, or track- 
ing the wild deer; its belly bids it make trial of the 
flocks, even by entering the guarded folds ,• so was 
Odysseus about to meet those fair-haired maids, for 
need constrained him. To them he seemed a loath- 
some sight, befouled with brine. They hurried off, 
one here, one there, over the stretching sands. Only 
the daughter of Alcinoiis stayed, for in her breast 
Athene had put courage and from her limbs took fear. 
Steadfast she stood to meet him. And now Odysseus 
doubted whether to make his suit by clasping the 
knees of the bright-eyed maid, or where he stood, 
aloof, in winning words to make that suit, and try if 
she would show the town and give him clothing. Re- 
flecting thus, it seemed the better way to make his 
suit in winning words, aloof ; for fear if he should 
clasp her knees, the maid might be offended. Forth- 
with he spoke, a winning and shrewd speech : — 

"I am your suppliant, princess. Are you some god 
or mortal ? If one of the gods who hold the open sky, 
to Artemis, daughter of mighty Zeus, in beauty, 
height, and bearing I find you likest. But if you are 
a mortal, living on the earth, most happy are your 



ODYSSEUS IN PHAEACIA 125 

father and your honored mother, most happy your 
brothers also. Surely their hearts ever grow warm with 
pleasure over you, when watching such a blossom 
moving in the dance. And then exceeding happy he, 
beyond all others, who shall with gifts prevail and 
lead you home. For I never before saw such a being 
with these eyes — no man, no woman. I am amazed 
to see. At Delos once, by Apollo's altar, something 
like you I noticed, a young palm-shoot springing up ; 
for thither too I came, and a great troop was with me, 
upon a journey where I was to meet with bitter trials. 
And just as when I looked on that I marveled long 
within, since never before sprang such a stalk from 
earth ; so, lady, I admire and marvel now at you, and 
greatly fear to touch your knees. Yet grievous woe is 
on me. Yesterday, after twenty days, I escaped from 
the wine-dark sea, and all that time the waves and 
boisterous winds bore me away from the island of 
Ogygia. Now some god cast me here, that probably 
here also I may meet with trouble ; for I do not think 
trouble will cease, but much the gods will first accom- 
plish. Then, princess, have compassion, for it is you 
to whom through many grievous toils I first am come ; 
none else I know of all who own this city and this 
land. Show me the town, and give me a rag to throw 
around me, if you had perhaps on coming here some 
wrapper for your linen. And may the gods grant all 
that in your thoughts you long for: husband and 
home and true accord may they bestow; for a better 
and higher gift than this there cannot be, when with 
accordant aims man and wife have a home. Great 
grief it is to foes and joy to friends ; but they them- 
selves best know its meaning." 

Then answered him white-armed Nausicaa : " Stran- 



126 GEORGE HERBERT PALMER 

ger, because you do not seem a common, senseless 
person, — and Olympian Zeus himself distributes for- 
tune to mankind and gives to high and low even as he 
wills to each ; and this he gave to you, and you must 
bear it therefore, — now you have reached our city 
and our land, you shall not lack for clothes nor any- 
thing besides which it is fit a hard-pressed suppliant 
should find. I will point out the town and tell its 
people's name. The Phaeacians own this city and this 
land, and I am the daughter of generous Alcinoiis, on 
whom the might and power of the Phaeacians rests." 

She spoke, and called her fair-haired waiting- 
women : " My women, stay ! Why do you run because 
you saw a man ? You surely do not think him evil- 
minded. The man is not alive, and never will be born, 
who can come and offer harm to the Phaeacian land : 
for we are very dear to the immortals ; and then we 
live apart, far on the surging sea, no other tribe of 
men has dealings with us. But this poor man has 
come here having lost his way, and we should give him 
aid ; for in the charge of Zeus all strangers and beg- 
gars stand, and a small gift is welcome. Then give, 
my women, to the stranger food and drink, and let 
him bathe in the river where there is shelter from the 
breeze." 

She spoke ; the others stopped and called to one an- 
other, and down they brought Odysseus to the place 
of shelter, even as Nausicaa, daughter of generous 
Alcinoiis, had ordered. They placed a robe and tunic 
there for clothing, they gave him in the golden flask the 
liquid oil, and bade him bathe in the stream's currents. 

The women went away. . . . And now, with water 
from the stream, royal Odysseus washed his skin clean 



ODYSSEUS IN PHAEACIA 127 

of the salt which clung about his back and his broad 
shoulders, and wiped from his head the foam brought 
by the barren sea ; and when he had thoroughly bathed 
and oiled himself and had put on the clothing which 
the chaste maiden gave, Athene, the daughter of Zeus, 
made him taller than before and stouter to behold, 
and she made the curling locks to fall around his head 
as on the hyacinth flower. As when a man lays gold 
on silver, — some skillful man whom Hephaestus and 
Pallas Athene have trained in every art, and he fash- 
ions graceful work ; so did she cast a grace upon hiB 
head and shoulders. He walked apart along the shore, 
and there sat down, beaming with grace and beauty. 
The maid observed ; then to her fair-haired waiting- 
women said : — 

" Hearken, my white-armed women, while I speak. 
Not without purpose on the part of all the gods that 
hold Olympus is this man's meeting with the godlike 
Phaeacians. A while ago, he really seemed to me ill- 
looking, but now he is like the gods who hold the 
open sky. Ah, might a man like this be called my 
husband, having his home here, and content to stay ! 
But give, my women, to the stranger food and drink." 

She spoke, and very willingly they heeded and 
obeyed, and set beside Odysseus food and drink. Then 
long-tried Odysseus eagerly drank and ate, for he had 
long been fasting. 

And now to other matters white-armed Nausicaa 
turned her thoughts. She folded the clothes and laid 
them in the beautiful wagon, she yoked the stout- 
hoofed mules, mounted herself, and calling to Odys- 
seus thus she spoke and said : — 

"Arise now, stranger, and hasten to the town, that 
I may set you on the road to my wise father's house, 



128 GEORGE HERBERT PALMER 

where you shall see, I promise you, the best of all 
Phaeacia. Only do this, — you seem to me not to lack 
understanding : while we are passing through the fields 
and farms, here with my women, behind the mules and 
cart, walk rapidly along, and I will lead the way. But 
as we near the town, — round which is a lofty ram- 
part, a beautiful harbor on each side and a narrow 
road between, — there curved ships line the way ; for 
every man has his own mooring-place. Beyond is the 
assembly near the beautiful grounds of Poseidon, 
constructed out of blocks of stone deeply imbedded. 
Further along, they make the black ships' tackling, 
cables and canvas, and shape out the oars ; for the 
Phaeacians do not care for bow and quiver, only for 
masts and oars of ships and the trim ships themselves, 
with which it is their joy to cross the foaming sea. 
Now the rude talk of such as these I would avoid, that 
no one afterwards may give me blame. For very for- 
ward persons are about the place, and some coarse 
man might say, if he should meet us : ' What tall and 
handsome stranger is following Nausicaa ? Where did 
she find him? A husband he will be, her very own. 
Some castaway, perhaps, she rescued from his vessel, 
some foreigner ; for we have no neighbors here. Or at 
her prayer some long-entreated god has come straight 
down from heaven, and he will keep her his forever. 
So much the better, if she has gone herself and found 
a husband elsewhere ! The people of our own land 
here, Phaeacians, she disdains, though she has many 
high-born suitors.' So they will talk, and for me it 
would prove a scandal. I should myself censure a girl 
who acted so, who, heedless of friends, while father 
and mother were alive, mingled with men before her 
public wedding. And, stranger, listen now to what I 



ODYSSEUS IN PHAEACIA 129 

say, that you may soon obtain assistance and safe con- 
duct from my father. Near our road you will see a 
stately grove of poplar trees, belonging to Athene ; in 
it a fountain flows, and round it is a meadow. That 
is my father's park, his fruitful vineyard, as far from 
the town as one can call. There sit and wait a while, 
until we come to the town and reach my father's pal- 
ace. But when you think we have already reached the 
palace, enter the city of the Phaeacians, and ask for 
the palace of my father, generous Alcinoiis. Easily is 
it known ; a child, though young, could show the way ; 
for the Phaeacians do not build their houses like the 
dwelling of Alcinoiis their prince. But when his house 
and court receive you, pass quickly through the hall 
until you find my mother. She sits in the firelight by 
the hearth, spinning sea-purple yarn, a marvel to be- 
hold, and resting against a pillar. Her handmaids sit 
behind her. Here too my father's seat rests on the self- 
same pillar, and here he sits and sips his wine like an 
immortal. Passing him by, stretch out your hands to 
our mother's knees, if you would see the day of your 
return in gladness and with speed, although you come 
from far. If she regards you kindly in her heart, then 
there is hope that you may see your friends and reach 
your stately house and native land." 

Saying this, with her bright whip she struck the 
mules, and fast they left the river's streams; and well 
they trotted, well they plied their feet, and skillfully 
she reined them that those on foot might follow, — the 
waiting- women and Odysseus, — and moderately she 
used the lash. The sun was setting when they reached 
the famous grove, Athene's sacred ground where royal 
Odysseus sat him down. And thereupon he prayed to 
the daughter of mighty Zeus : — 



130 GEORGE HERBERT PALMER 

" Hearken, thou child of aegis-bearing Zeus, un- 
wearied one ! O hear me now, although before thou 
didst not hear me, when I was wrecked, what time the 
great Land-shaker wrecked me. Grant that I come 
among the Phaeacians welcomed and pitied by them." 

So spoke he in his prayer, and Pallas Athene heard, 
but did not yet appear to him in open presence ; for 
she regarded still her father's brother, who stoutly 
strove with godlike Odysseus until he reached his 
land. 

Here, then, long-tried royal Odysseus made his 
prayer ; but to the town the strong mules bore the maid. 
And when she reached her father's famous palace, 
she stopped before the door-way, and round her stood 
her brothers, men like immortals, who from the cart un- 
yoked the mules and carried the clothing in. The 
maid went to her chamber, where a fire was kindled 
for her by an old Apeirean woman, the chamber- 
servant Eurymedousa, whom long ago curved ships 
brought from Apeira ; her they had chosen from the 
rest to be the gift of honor for Alcinoiis, because he 
was the lord of all Phaeacians, and people listened to 
his voice as if he were a god. She was the nurse of 
white-armed Nausicaa at the palace, and she it was 
who kindled her the fire and in her room prepared 
her supper. 

And now Odysseus rose to go to the city ; but Athene 
kindly drew thick clouds around Odysseus, for fear 
some bold Phaeacian meeting him might trouble him 
with talk and ask him who he was. And just as he 
was entering the pleasant town, the goddess, clear-eyed 
Athene, came to meet him, disguised as a young girl 
who bore a water-jar. She paused as she drew near, 
and royal Odysseus asked : — 



ODYSSEUS IN PHAEACIA 131 

" My child, could you not guide me to the house of 
one Alcinoiis, who is ruler of this people ? For I am 
a toil-worn stranger come from far, out of a distant 
land. Therefore I know not one among the men who 
own this city and this land." 

Then said to him the goddess, clear-eyed Athene : 
" Yes, good old stranger, I will show the house for 
which you ask, for it stands near my gentle father's. 
But follow in silence ; I will lead the way. Cast not a 
glance at any man and ask no questions, for our people 
do not well endure a stranger, nor courteously receive 
a man who comes from elsewhere. Yet they themselves 
trust in swift ships and traverse the great deep, for 
the Earth-shaker permits them. Swift are their ships 
as wing or thought." 

Saying this, Pallas Athene led the way in haste, 
and he walked after in the footsteps of the goddess. 
So the Phaeacians, famed for shipping, did not ob- 
serve him walking through the town among them, be- 
cause Athene, the fair-haired powerful goddess, did 
not allow it, but in the kindness of her heart drew a 
marvelous mist around him. And now Odysseus ad- 
mired the harbors, the trim ships, the meeting-places 
of the lords themselves, and the long walls that were 
so high, fitted with palisades, a marvel to behold. 
Then as they neared the famous palace of the king, 
the goddess, clear-eyed Athene, thus began : — 

" Here, good old stranger, is the house you bade me 
show. You will see heaven-descended kings sitting at 
table here. But enter, and have no misgivings in your 
heart ; for the courageous man in all affairs better at- 
tains his end, come he from where he may. First you 
shall find the Queen within the hall. Arete is her 
name. . . . Alcinoiis took Arete for his wife, and he 



132 GEORGE HERBERT PALMER 

has honored her as no one else on earth is honored 
among the women who to-day keep houses for their 
husbands. Thus has she had a heartfelt honor, and 
she has it still, from her own children, from Alcinoiis 
himself, and from the people also, who gaze on her as 
on a god and greet her with welcomes when she walks 
about the town. For of sound judgment, woman as she 
is, she has no lack ; and those whom she regards, 
though men, find troubles clear away. If she regards 
you kindly in her heart, then there is hope that you 
may see your friends and reach your high-roofed house 
and native land." 

Saying this, clear-eyed Athene passed away, over 
the barren sea. She turned from pleasant Scheria, 
and came to Marathon and wide-wayed Athens and 
entered there the strong house of Erechtheus. Mean- 
while Odysseus neared the lordly palace of Alcinoiis, 
and his heart was deeply stirred so that he paused be- 
fore he crossed the brazen threshold ; for a sheen as 
of the sun or moon played through the high-roofed 
house of generous Alcinoiis. On either hand ran walls 
of bronze from threshold to recess, and round about 
the ceiling was a cornice of dark metal. Doors made 
of gold closed in the solid building. The door-posts 
were of silver and stood on a bronze threshold, silver 
the lintel overhead, and gold the handle. On the two 
sides were gold and silver dogs ; these had Hephaestus 
wrought with subtle craft to guard the house of gen- 
erous Alcinoiis, creatures immortal, young forever. 
Within were seats planted against the wall on this side 
and on that, from threshold to recess, in long array ; 
and over these were strewn light fine-spun robes, the 
work of women. Here the Phaeacian leaders used to 
sit, drinking and eating, holding constant cheer. And 



ODYSSEUS IN PHAEACIA 133 

golden youths on massive pedestals stood and held 
flaming torches in their hands to light by night the 
palace for the feasters. 

In the King's house are fifty serving maids, some 
grinding at the mill the yellow corn, some plying 
looms or twisting yarn, who as they sit are like the 
leaves of a tall poplar ; and from the close-spun linen 
drops the liquid oil. And as Phaeacian men are skilled 
beyond all others in speeding a swift ship along the 
sea, so are their women practiced at the loom ; for 
Athene has given them in large measure skill in fair 
works and noble minds. 

Without the court and close beside its gate is a 
large garden, covering four acres ; around it runs a 
hedge on either side. Here grow tall thrifty trees — 
pears, pomegranates, apples with shining fruit, sweet 
figs and thrifty olives. On them fruit never fails ; it 
is not gone in winter or in summer, but lasts through- 
out the year ; for constantly the west wind's breath 
brings some to bud and mellows others. Pear ripens 
upon pear, apple on apple, cluster on cluster, fig on 
fig. Here too the teeming vineyard has been planted, 
one part of which, the drying place, lying on level 
ground, is heating in the sun ; elsewhere men gather 
grapes ; and elsewhere still they tread them. In front, 
the grapes are green and shed their flower, but a sec- 
ond row are now just turning dark. And here trim 
garden-beds, along the outer line, spring up in every 
kind and all the year are gay. Near by, two fountains 
rise, one scattering its streams throughout the garden, 
one bounding by another course beneath the court- 
yard gate toward the high house ; from this the towns- 
folk draw their water. Such at the palace of Alcinoiis 
were the gods' splendid gifts. 



134 GEORGE HERBERT PALMER 

Here long-tried royal Odysseus stood and gazed. 
Then after he had gazed to his heart's fill on all, he 
quickly crossed the threshold and came within the 
house. 

NOTES 

Fhaeacia : — The land of the Phaeacians, on the Island of 
Scheria, or Corcyra, the modern Corfu. 

Athene : — Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, skill, and sci- 
ence. She was interested in war, and protected warlike heroes. 

Cyclops : — One of a race of uncouth giants, each of whom 
had but a single eye, which was in the middle of the forehead. 

Nausithoiis : — The king of the Phaeacians at the time they 
entered Scheria. 

Hades : — The Tealm of souls ; not necessarily a place of 
punishment. 

Artemis : — Another name for Diana, goddess of the moon. 

Taygetus and Erymanthus : — Mountains in Greece. 

Leto : — The mother of Artemis. 

Delos : — An island in the Aegean Sea. 

Ogygia : — The island of the goddess Calypso, who held 
Odysseus captive for seven years. 

Hephaestus : — Another name for Vulcan, the god of the 
under-world. He was a skilled worker in metal. 

Poseidon : — Neptune, god of the ocean. 

Land-shaker : — Neptune. 

Marathon : — A plain eighteen miles from Athens. It was 
here that the Greeks defeated the Persians in 490 B.C. 

Erectheus : — The mythical founder of Attica ; he was half 
man and half serpent. 



THE PRONUNCIATION OF PROPER NAMES IN 

THIS SELECTION 

Al cin' o us (al sin' o ws) A the' ne (a the' ne) 

Ap ei' ra (ap i' ra) Ca lyp' so (ka lip' so) 

Ap ei re' an (ap i re' an) Cir' ce (sur' se) 

A re' te (a re' te) Cy' clops (si' clops) 

Ar' te mis (ar' te mis) De' los (de' 16s) 



ODYSSEUS IN PHAEACIA 135 

Dy' mas (di' mds) Nau sith' o us (n6 sith' 6 us) 

E rech' theus (e rek' thus) O dys' seus (o dis' us) 

E ry man' thus (er i man' thws) O gyg' i a (o jij' i a) 

Eu rym e dou' sa (u rim e doo' so) Phae a' cia (f e a' sha) 

He phaes' tus (he fes' tus) Po sei' don (po si' don) 

Le' to (le' to) Scher' i a (ske' ri a) 

Mar' a thon (mai/ a thon) Ta yg' e tus (ta ij' e tus) 
Nau sic' a a (no sik' a d) 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

Odysseus (Ulysses)" has been east ashore after a long battle 
with the sea, following his attempt to escape on a raft from 
Calypso's island. He has been saved by the intervention of the 
goddess Athene, who often protects distressed heroes. When 
Book VI opens, he is sleeping in a secluded nook under an olive 
tree. (For Odysseus's adventures on the sea, consult Book V of 
the Odyssey.) Is Athene's visit to Nausieaa an unusual sort of 
thing in Greek story ? Does it appear that it was customary for 
princesses to do their own washing ? Note here that I refers to 
the daughter of Dymas, since Athene is not speaking in her own 
character. From Nausicaa's conversation with her father and 
her preparations for departure, what can you judge of Greek 
family life ? How does the author make us see vividly the ac- 
tivities of Nausieaa and her maids ? Does the out-door scene 
appear true to life ? This virgin pure refers to Nausieaa, who is 
being compared to Artemis (Diana), the goddess of the hunt. 
What plan has Athene for assisting Odysseus ? From the hero's 
speech, what can you tell of his character? Can you find out 
what adjectives are usually applied to Odysseus in the Iliad and 
the Odyssey ? Why does he here call Nausieaa " Princess " ? 
What effect is his speech likely to have ? What can you tell of 
Nausieaa from her reply ? Give her reasons for not taking 
Odysseus with her to the town. Does she fail in hospitality ? 
What do her reasons show of the life of Greek women ? What 
do you judge of the prosperity of the Phaeacians ? Why does 
Nausieaa tell Odysseus to seek the favor of her mother ? Her 
father's brother means Neptune (the Sea) — brother of Zeus, 
Athene's father ; Neptune is enraged at Odysseus and wishes to 
destroy him. Here then: At this point Book VII begins. From 
what is said of Arete, what can you tell of the influence of the 



136 GEORGE HERBERT PALMER 

Greek women ? How does the author make you feel the rich- 
ness of Aleiuous's palace ? How does it differ from modern 
houses ? Corn means grain, not Indian corn, which, of course, 
had not yet been brought from the New World. Note the vivid 
description of the garden. How do you think Odysseus is re- 
ceived at the house of Alcinous ? You can find out by reading 
the rest of Book VII of the Odyssey. 



THEME SUBJECTS 

One of Ulysses's Adventures Along the Shore 

An Escape from the Sea Among Strangers 

A Picnic on the Shore A Garden 

The Character of Nausicaa A Story from the Odyssey 

My Idea of a Princess Odysseus at the House of Alcin- 

The Life of a Greek Woman oils 

A Group of Girls The Lady of the House 

The Character of Odysseus The Greek Warrior 

Shipwrecked The Stranger 

A Beautiful Building Why I Wish to Study Greek 



SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING 

A Story from the Odyssey : — Read, in a translation of 
the Odyssey, a story of Odysseus, and tell it in your own words. 
The following stories are appropriate : The Departure from 
Calypso's Island, Book V; The Cyclops Polyphemus, Book IX 
The Palace of Circe, Book X ; The Land of the Dead, Book XI 
Scylla and Charybdis, Book XII ; The Swineherd, Book XIV 
The Trial of the Bow, Book XXI ; The Slaughter of the Suit- 
ors, Book XXII. 

After you have chosen a story, read it through several times, 
to fix the details in your mind. Lay the book aside, and write 
the story simply, but as vividly as possible. 

The Stranger : — Explain the circumstances under which 
the stranger appears. Are people startled at seeing him (or 
her) ? Describe him. Is he bewildered ? Does he ask direc- 
tions ? Does he ask help ? Quote his words directly. How are 
his remarks received ? Are people afraid of him ? or do they 



ODYSSEUS IN PHAEACIA 137 

make sport of him ? or do they receive him kindly ? Who aids 
him ? Tell what he does and what becomes of him. Quote what 
is said of him after he is gone. 

Perhaps you will like to tell the story of Ulysses's arrival 
among the Phaeacians, giving it a modern setting, and using 
modern names. 

Odysseus at the House of Alcinous : — Without read- 
ing Book VII of the Odyssey, write what you imagine to be 
the conversation between Alcinoiis (or Arete) and Odysseus, 
when the shipwrecked hero enters the palace. 



COLLATERAL READINGS 

The Odyssey George Herbert Palmer 

The Odyssey of Homer (prose (Trans.) 

translation) Butcher and Lang 

The Iliad of Homer .... Lang, Leaf, and Myers 
The Odyssey (translation in 

verse) William CuUen Bryant 

The Odyssey for Boys and 

Girls A. J. Church 

The Story of the Odyssey . . " " " 

Greek Song and Story ...""" 

The Adventures of Odysseus . Marvin, Mayor, and Stawell 

Tanglewood Tales .... Nathaniel Hawthorne 

Home Life of the Ancient 

Greeks H. Bliimner (trans, by A. Zim- 
merman) 

Classic Myths (chapter 27) . C. M. Gayley 
The Age of Fable (chapters 

22 and 23) Thomas Bulfinch 

The Story of the Greek People Eva March Tappan 

Greece and the Aegean Isles . Philip S. Marden 



Greek Lands and Letters 
Old Greek Folk Stories 
Men of Old Greece . 
The Lotos-eaters . • 

Ulysses 

The Strayed Reveller 



F. G. and A. C. E. AUinson 
J. P. Peabody 
Jennie Hall 

Alfred Tennyson 
« (( 

Matthew Arnold 



138 GEORGE HERBERT PALMER 

A Song of Phaeacia Andrew Lang 

The Voyagers (in The Fields 

of Dawn) Lloyd Mifflin 

Alice Freeman Palmer George Herbert Palmer 

See the references for Moly on p. 84, and for Odysseus on 
p. 140. 



ODYSSEUS 

GEORGE CABOT LODGE 

He strove with Gods and men in equal mood 
Of great endurance : Not alone his hands 
Wrought in wild seas and labored in strange lands, 
And not alone his patient strength withstood 

The clashing cliffs and Circe's perilous sands : 
Eager of some imperishable good 
He drave new pathways thro' the trackless flood 
Foreguarded, fearless, free from Fate's commands. 

How shall our faith discern the truth he sought ? 
We too must watch and wander till our eyes, 
Turned skyward from the topmost tower of thought, 

Haply shall find the star that marked his goal, 
The watch-fire of transcendent liberties 
Lighting the endless spaces of the soul. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

Read the poem through. How did Ulysses strive with gods 
and meu ? Why can it be said that he did not labor alone ? 
Look up the story of Circe and her palace.^ What was the im- 
perishable good that Ulysses sought ? What does his experience 
have to do with our lives ? What sort of freedom does the 
author speak of in the last few lines ? 

This verse-form is called the sonnet. How many lines has it ? 
Make out a scheme of the rhymes : abba, etc. Notice the 
change of thought at the ninth line. Do all sonnets show this 
change ? 

^ See references for Moly, on p. 84. 



140 GEORGE CABOT LODGE 

EXERCISES 

Read several other sonnets ; for instance, the poem On the 
Life-Mask of Abraham Lincoln, on page 210, or On First Looking 
into Chapman's Homer, by John Keats, or The Grasshopper and 
the Cricket, by Leigh Hunt. 

Notice how these other sonnets are constructed. Why are 
they considered good ? 

If possible, read part of what is said about the sonnet in Eng- 
lish Verse, by R. M. Alden or in Forms of English Poetry, by C. 
F. Johnson, or in Melodies of English Verse, by Lewis Kennedy 
Morse ; notice some of the examples given. 

Look in the good magazines for examples of the sonnet. 

COLLATERAL READINGS 

To the Grasshopper and the Cricket . Leigh Hunt 
The Fish Answers (or. The Fish to the 

Man) 1 Leigh Hunt 

The Grasshopper John Keats 

On First Looking into Chapman's 

Homer John Keats 

Ozymandias P. B. Shelley 

The Sonnet R. W. Gilder 

The Odyssey (sonnet) Andrew Lang 

The Wine of Circe (sonnet) .... Dante Gabriel Rossetti 

The Automobile (sonnet) ^ . . . . Percy Mackaye 

The Sonnet William Wordsworth 

See also references for the Odyssey, p. 137, and for Moly, p. 84. 

^ In Alden 's English Verse. 

^ In The Little Book of Modern Verse, edited by J. B. Rittenhouse. 



A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE 

WILLIAM DEAN HOWBLLS 

(In Suburban Sketches) 

It was long past the twilight hour, which has been 
already mentioned as so oppressive in suburban places, 
and it was even too late for visitors, when a resident, 
whom I shall briefly describe as a contributor to the 
magazines, was startled by a ring at his door. As any 
thoughtful person would have done upon the like occa- 
sion, he ran over his acquaintance in his mind, specu- 
lating whether it were such or such a one, and dis- 
missing the whole list of improbabilities, before he laid 
down the book he was reading and answered the bell. 
When at last he did this, he was rewarded by the 
apparition of an utter stranger on his threshold, — a 
gaunt figure of forlorn and curious smartness tower- 
ing far above him, that jerked him a nod of the head, 
and asked if Mr. Hapford lived there. The face which 
the lamplight revealed was remarkable for a harsh 
two days' growth of beard, and a single bloodshot 
eye ; yet it was not otherwise a sinister countenance, 
and there was something in the strange presence that 
appealed and touched. The contributor, revolving the 
facts vaguely in his mind, was not sure, after all, that 
it was not the man's clothes rather than his expression 
that softened him toward the rugged visage : they 
were so tragically cheap ; and the misery of helpless 
needle-women, and the poverty and ignorance of the 
purchaser, were so apparent in their shabby newness, 
of which they appeared still conscious enough to have 



142 WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 

led the way to the very window, in the Semitic quarter 
of the city, where they had lain ticketed, " This nobby 
suit for 115." 

But the stranger's manner put both his face and 
his clothes out of mind, and claimed a deeper interest 
when, being answered that the person for whom he 
asked did not live there, he set his bristling lips hard 
together, and sighed heavily. 

" They told me," he said, in a hopeless way, " that 
he lived on this street, and I 've been to every other 
house. I 'm very anxious to find him, Cap'n," — the 
contributor, of course, had no claim to the title with 
which he was thus decorated, — " for I 've a daugh- 
ter living with him, and I want to see her ; I 've just 
got home from a two years' voyage, and " — there 
was a struggle of the Adam's-apple in the man's gaunt 
throat — "I find she 's about all there is left of my 
family." 

How complex is every human motive! This con- 
tributor had been lately thinking, whenever he turned 
the pages of some foolish traveller, — some empty 
prattler of Southern or Eastern lands, where all sen- 
sation was long ago exhausted, and the oxygen has 
perished from every sentiment, so has it been breathed 
and breathed again, — that nowadays the wise adven- 
turer sat down beside his own register and waited for 
incidents to seek him out. It seemed to him that the 
cultivation of a patient and receptive spirit was the 
sole condition needed to insure the occurrence of all 
manner of surprising facts within the range of one's 
own personal knowledge ; that not only the Greeks 
were at our doors, but the fairies and the genii, and 
all the people of romance, who had but to be hospita- 
bly treated in order to develop the deepest interest of 



A ROMANCE OE REAL LIFE 143 

fiction, and to become the characters of plots so ingen- 
ious that the most cunning invention were poor beside 
them. I myself am not so confident of this, and would 
rather trust Mr. Charles Reade, say, for my amuse- 
ment than any chance combination of events. But I 
should be afraid to say how much his pride in the 
character of the stranger's sorrows, as proof of the 
correctness of his theory, prevailed with the contribu- 
tor to ask him to come in and sit down ; though I 
hope that some abstract impulse of humanity, some 
compassionate and unselfish care for the man's mis- 
fortunes as misfortunes, was not wholly wanting. In- 
deed, the helpless simplicity with which he had con- 
fided his case might have touched a harder heart. 
" Thank you," said the poor fellow, after a moment's 
hesitation. " I believe I will come in. I've been on 
foot all day, and after such a long voyage it makes a 
man dreadfully sore to walk about so much. Perhaps 
you can think of a Mr. Hapford living somewhere in 
the neighborhood." 

He sat down, and, after a pondering silence, in 
which he had remained with his head fallen upon his 
breast, " My name is Jonathan Tinker," he said, with 
the unaffected air which had already impressed the 
contributor, and as if he felt that some form of intro- 
duction was necessary, " and the girl that I want to 
find is Julia Tinker." Then he added, resuming the 
eventful personal history which the listener exulted, 
while he regretted, to hear : " You see, I shipped first 
to Liverpool, and there I heard from my family ; and 
then I shipped again for Hong-Kong, and after that 
I never heard a word : I seemed to miss the letters 
everywhere. This morning, at four o'clock, I left my 
ship as soon as she had hauled into the dock, and 



144 WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 

hurried up home. The house was shut, and not a soul 
in it; and I didn't know what to do, and I sat down 
on the doorstep to wait till the neighbors woke up, to 
ask them what had become of my family. And the 
first one come out he told me my wife had been dead 
a year and a half, and the baby I 'd never seen, with 
her ; and one of my boys was dead ; and he did n't 
know where the rest of the children was, but he 'd 
heard two of the little ones was with a family in the 
city." 

The man mentioned these things with the half-apol- 
ogetical air observable in a certain kind of Americans 
when some accident obliges them to confess the in- 
firmity of the natural feelings. They do not ask your 
sympathy, and you offer it quite at your own risk, 
with a chance of having it thrown back upon your 
hands. The contributor assumed the risk so far as to 
say, "Pretty rough ! " when the stranger paused ; and 
perhaps these homely words were best suited to reach 
the homely heart. The man's quivering lips closed 
hard again, a kind of spasm passed over his dark 
face, and then two very small drops of brine shone 
upon his weather-worn cheeks. This demonstration, 
into which he had been surprised, seemed to stand for 
the passion of tears into which the emotional races fall 
at such times. He opened his lips with a kind of dry 
click, and went on: — 

" I hunted about the whole forenoon in the city, 
and at last I found the children. I 'd been gone so 
long they did n't know me, and somehow I thought 
the people they were with were n't over-glad I 'd 
turned up. Finally the oldest child told me that Julia 
was living with a Mr. Hapford on this street, and I 
started out here to-night to look her up. If I can find 



A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE 145 

her, I 'm all right. I can get the family together, then, 
and start new." 

"It seems rather odd," mused the listener aloud, 
" that the neighbors let them break up so, and that 
they should all scatter as they did." 

" Well, it ain't so curious as it seems, Cap'n. 
There was money for them at the owners', all the 
time ; I 'd left part of my wages when I sailed ; but 
they did n't know how to get at it, and what could a 
parcel of children do ? Julia 's a good girl, and when 
I find her I 'm all right." 

The writer could only repeat that there was no Mr. 
Hapford living on that street, and never had been, so 
far as he knew. Yet there might be such a person in 
the neighborhood : and they would go out together 
and ask at some of the houses about. But the stran- 
ger must first take a glass of wine ; for he looked 
used up. 

The sailor awkwardly but civilly enough protested 
that he did not want to give so much trouble, but 
took the glass, and, as he put it to his lips, said 
formally, as if it were a toast or a kind of grace, " I 
hope I may have the opportunity of returning the 
compliment." The contributor thanked him ; though, 
as he thought of all the circumstances of the case, and 
considered the cost at which the stranger had come to 
enjoy his politeness, he felt little eagerness to secure 
the return of the compliment at the same price, and 
added, with the consequence of another set phrase, 
"Not at all." But the thought had made him the 
more anxious to befriend the luckless soul fortune 
had cast in his way ; and so the two sallied out to- 
gether, and rang doorbells wherever lights were still 
seen burning in the windows, and asked the astonished 



146 WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 

people who answered their summons whether any Mr. 
Hapford were known to live in the neighborhood. 

And although the search for this gentleman proved 
vain, the contributor could not feel that an expedition 
which set familiar objects in such novel lights was 
altogether a failure. He entered so intimately into 
the cares and anxieties of his protege that at times 
he felt himself in some inexplicable sort a shipmate 
of Jonathan Tinker, and almost personally a partner 
of his calamities. The estrangement of all things 
which takes place, within doors and without, about 
midnight may have helped to cast this doubt upon 
his identity ; — he seemed to be visiting now for the 
first time the streets and neighborhoods nearest his 
own, and his feet stumbled over the accustomed walks. 
In his quality of houseless wanderer, and — so far as 
appeared to others — possibly worthless vagabond, he 
also got a new and instructive effect upon the faces 
which, in his real character, he knew so well by their 
looks of neighborly greeting ; and it is his belief that 
the first hospitable prompting of the human heart is 
to shut the door in the eyes of homeless strangers who 
present themselves after eleven o'clock. By that time 
the servants are all abed, and the gentleman of the 
house answers the bell, and looks out with a loath and 
bewildered face, which gradually changes to one of 
suspicion, and of wonder as to what those fellows can 
possibly want of him, till at last the prevailing expres- 
sion is one of contrite desire to atone for the first re- 
luctance by any sort of service. The contributor pro- 
fesses to have observed these changing phases in the 
visages of those whom he that night called from their 
dreams, or arrested in the act of going to bed ; and he 
drew the conclusion — very proper for his imaginable 



A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE 147 

connection with the garroting and other adventurous 
brotherhoods — that the most flattering moment for 
knocking on the head people who answer a late ring 
at night is either in their first selfish bewilderment, 
or their final self-abandonment to their better im- 
pulses. It does not seem to have occurred to him that 
he would himself have been a much more favorable 
subject for the predatory arts than any of his neighbors, 
if his shipmate, the unknown companion of his re- 
searches for Mr. Hapford, had been at all so minded. 
But the faith of the gaunt giant upon which he reposed 
was good, and the contributor continued to wander 
about with him in perfect safety. Not a soul among 
those they asked had ever heard of a Mr. Hapford, — 
far less of a Julia Tinker living with him. But they 
all listened to the contributor's explanation with inter- 
est and eventual sympathy ; and in truth, — briefly 
told, with a word now and then thrown in by Jona- 
than Tinker, who kept at the bottom of the steps, 
showing like a gloomy spectre in the night, or, in 
his grotesque length and gauntness, like the other's 
shadow cast there by the lamplight, — it was a story 
which could hardly fail to awaken pity. 

At last, after ringing several bells where there were 
no lights, in the mere wantonness of good-will, and 
going away before they could be answered (it would 
be entertaining to know what dreams they caused the 
sleepers within), there seemed to be nothing for it but 
to give up the search till morning, and go to the main 
street and wait for the last horse-car to the city. 

There, seated upon the curbstone, Jonathan Tinker, 
being plied with a few leading questions, told In hints 
and scraps the story of his hard life, which was at 
present that of a second mate, and had been that of 



148 WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 

a cabin-boy and of a seaman before the mast. The 
sfeeond mate's place he held to be the hardest aboard 
ship. You got only a few dollars more than the men, 
and you did not rank with the officers ; you took your 
meals alone, and in everything you belonged by your- 
self. The men did not respect you, and sometimes 
the captain abused you awfully before the passengers. 
The hardest captain that Jonathan Tinker ever sailed 
with was Captain Gooding of the Cape. It had got 
to be so that no man could ship second mate under 
Captain Gooding ; and Jonathan Tinker was with hira 
only one voyage. When he had been home awhile, 
he saw an advertisement for a second mate, and he 
went round to the owners'. They had kept it secret 
who the captain was ; but there was Captain Gooding 
in the owners' office. " Why, here's the man, now, 
that I want for a second mate," said he, when Jona- 
than Tinker entered; "he knows me." — "Captain 
Gooding, I know you 'most too well to want to sail 
under you," answered Jonathan. " I might go if I 
had n't been with you one voyage too many already." 

"And then the men!" said Jonathan, "the men 
coming aboard drunk, and having to be pounded 
sober! And the hardest of the fight falls on the 
second mate ! Why, there is n't an inch of me that 
has n't been cut over or smashed into a jell. I 've 
had three ribs broken ; I 've got a scar from a knife 
on my cheek; and I've been stabbed bad enough, 
half a dozen times, to lay me up." 

Here he gave a sort of desperate laugh, as if the 
notion of so much misery and such various mutilation 
were too grotesque not to be amusing. " Well, what 
can you do? " he went on. " If you don't strike, the 
men think you 're afraid of them ; and so you have to 



A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE 149 

begin hard and go on hard. I always tell a man, 
' Now, my man, I always begin with a man the way I 
mean to keep on. You do your duty and you 're all 
right. But if you don't ' — Well, the men ain't 
Americans any more, — Dutch, Spaniards, Chinese, 
Portuguee, and it ain't like abusing a white man." 

Jonathan Tinker was plainly part of the horrible 
tyranny which we all know exists on shipboard ; and 
his listener respected him the more that, though he 
had heart enough to be ashamed of it, he was too 
honest not to own it. 

Why did he still follow the sea ? Because he did 
not know what else to do. When he was younger, 
he used to love it, but now he hated it. Yet there 
was not a prettier life in the world if you got to be 
captain. He used to hope for that once, but not 
now; though he thought he could navigate a ship. 
Only let him get his family together again, and he 
would — yes, he would — try to do something ashore. 

No car had yet come in sight, and so the contribu- 
tor suggested that they should walk to the car-office, 
and look in the " Directory," which is kept there, for 
the name of Hapford, in search of whom it had 
already been arranged that they should renew their 
acquaintance on the morrow. Jonathan Tinker, when 
they had reached the office, heard with constitutional 
phlegm that the name of the Hapford for whom he 
inquired was not in the " Directory." " Never mind," 
said the other ; " come round to my house in the 
morning. We'll find him yet." So they parted with 
a shake of the hand, the second mate saying that he 
believed he should go down to the vessel and sleep 
aboard, — if he could sleep, — and murmuring at the 
last moment the hope of returning the compliment, 



150 WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 

while the other walked homeward, weary as to the 
flesh, but, in spite of his sympathy for Jonathan 
Tinker, very elate in spirit. The truth is, — and 
however disgraceful to human nature, let the truth 
still be told, — he had recurred to his primal satisfac- 
tion in the man as calamity capable of being used for 
such and such literary ends, and, while he pitied him, 
rejoiced in him as an episode of real life quite as 
striking and complete as anything in fiction. It was 
literature made to his hand. Nothing could be better, 
he mused ; and once more he passed the details of the 
story in review, and beheld all those pictures which 
the poor fellow's artless words had so vividly conjured 
up : he saw him leaping ashore in the gray summer 
dawn as soon as the ship hauled into the dock, and 
making his way, with his vague sea-legs unaccustomed 
to the pavements, up through the silent and empty 
city streets ; he imagined the tumult of fear and hope 
which the sight of the man's home must have caused 
in him, and the benumbing shock of finding it blind 
and deaf to all his appeals ; he saw him sitting down 
upon what had been his own threshold, and waiting 
in a sort of bewildered patience till the neighbors 
should be awake, while the noises of the streets gradu- 
ally arose, and the wheels began to rattle over the 
stones, and the milk-man and the ice-man came and 
went, and the waiting figure began to be stared at, 
and to challenge the curiosity of the passing police- 
man ; he fancied the opening of the neighbor's door, 
and the slow, cold understanding of the case ; the 
manner, whatever it was, in which the sailor was told 
that one year before his wife had died, with her babe, 
and that his children were scattered, none knew 
where. As the contributor dwelt pityingly upon these 



A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE 151 

things, but at the same time estimated their aesthetic 
value one by one, he drew near the head of his street, 
and found himself a few paces behind a boy slouching 
onward through the night, to whom he called out, ad- 
venturously, and with no real hope of information, — 

" Do you happen to know anybody on this street by 
the name of Hapford ? " 

" Why, no, not in this town," said the boy ; but he 
added that there was a street of the same name in a 
neighboring suburb, and that there was a Hapford 
living on it. 

" By Jove ! " thought the contributor, " this is 
more like literature than ever " ; and he hardly knew 
whether to be more provoked at his own stupidity in 
not thinking of a street of the same name in the next 
village, or delighted at the element of fatality which 
the fact introduced into the story ; for Tinker, accord- 
ing to his own account, must have landed from the 
cars a few rods from the very door he was seeking, 
and so walked farther and farther from it every mo- 
ment. He thought the case so curious, that he laid it 
briefly before the boy, who, however he might have 
been inwardly affected, was sufficiently true to the 
national traditions not to make the smallest conceiv- 
able outward sign of concern in it. 

At home, however, the contributor related his ad- 
ventures and the story of Tinker's life, adding the 
fact that he had just found out where Mr. Hapford 
lived. "It was the only touch wanting," said he; "the 
whole thing is now perfect." 

" It 's too perfect," was answered from a sad enthu- 
siasm. " Don't speak of it ! I can't take it in." 

" But the question is," said the contributor, peni- 
tently taking himself to task for forgetting the hero 



152 WILLIAM DEAN HO WELLS 

of these excellent misfortunes in his delight at their 
perfection, " how am .1 to sleep to-night, thinking of 
that poor soul's suspense and uncertainty? Never 
mind, — I '11 be up early, and run over and make sure 
that it is Tinker's Hapford, before he gets out here, 
and have a pleasant surprise for him. Would it not 
be a justifiable coup de theatre to fetch his daughter 
here, and let her answer his ring at the door when he 
comes in the morning ? " 

This plan was discouraged. " No, no ; let them meet 
in their own way. Just take him to Hapford's house 
and leave him." 

"Very well. But he 's too good a character to lose 
sight of. He 's got to come back here and tell us 
what he intends to do." 

The birds, next morning, not having had the second 
mate on their minds either as an unhappy man or a 
most fortunate episode, but having slept long and 
soundly, were singing in a very sprightly way in the 
wayside trees ; and the sweetness of their notes made 
the contributor's heart light as he climbed the hill 
and rang at Mr. Hapford's door. 

The door was opened by a young girl of fifteen or 
sixteen, whom he knew at a glance for the second 
mate's daughter, but of whom, for form's sake, he 
asked if there were a girl named Julia Tinker living 
there. 

" My name 's Julia Tinker," answered the maid, 
who had rather a disappointing face. 

"Well," said the contributor, "your father's got 
back from his Hong-Kong voyage." 

" Hong-Kong voyage ? " echoed the girl, with a 
stare of helpless inquiry, but no other visible emotion. 

" Yes. He had never heard of your mother's death. 



A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE 153 

He came home yesterday morning, and was looking 
for you all day." 

Julia Tinker remained open-mouthed but mute ; 
and the other was puzzled at the want of feeling 
shown, which he could not account for even as a na- 
tional trait. " Perhaps there 's some mistake," he 
said. 

" There must be," answered Julia : " my father 
has n't been to sea for a good many years. My 
father," she added, with a diffidence indescribably 
mingled with a sense of distinction, — " my father 's 
in State's Prison. What kind of looking man was 
this?" 

The contributor mechanically described him. 

Julia Tinker broke into a loud, hoarse laugh. 
" Yes, it 's him, sure enough." And then, as if the 
joke were too good to keep : " Mis' Hapford, Mis' 
Hapford, father's got out. Do come here ! " she called 
into a back room. 

When Mrs. Hapford appeared, Julia fell back, and, 
having deftly caught a fly on the doorpost, occupied 
herself in plucking it to pieces, while she listened to 
the conversation of the others. 

" It 's all true enough," said Mrs. Hapford, when 
the writer had recounted the moving story of Jona- 
than Tinker, " so far as the death of his wife and 
baby goes. But he has n't been to sea for a good 
many years, and he must have just come out of State's 
Prison, where he was put for bigamy. There 's al- 
ways two sides to a story, you know ; but they say it 
broke his first wife's heart, and she died. His friends 
don't want him to find his children, and this girl 
especially." 

" He 's found his children in the city," said the con- 



154 WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 

tributor gloomily, being at a loss what to do or say, 
in view of the wreck of his romance. 

"Oh, he's found 'em, has he?" cried Julia, with 
heightened amusement. " Then he '11 have me next, 
if I don't pack and go." 

" I 'm very, very sorry," said the contributor, se- 
cretly resolved never to do another good deed, no 
matter how temptingly the opportunity presented it- 
self. " But you may depend he won't find out from 
me where you are. Of course I had no earthly reason 
for supposing his story was not true." 

" Of course," said kind-hearted Mrs. Hapford, min- 
gling a drop of honey with the gall in the contribu- 
tor's soul, " you only did your duty." 

And indeed, as he turned away, he did not feel al- 
together without compensation. However Jonathan 
Tinker had fallen in his esteem as a man, he had even 
risen as literature. The episode which had appeared 
so perfect in its pathetic phases did not seem less fin- 
ished as a farce ; and this person, to whom all things 
of every-day life presented themselves in periods more 
or less rounded, and capable of use as facts or illus- 
trations, could not but rejoice in these new incidents, 
as dramatically fashioned as the rest. It occurred to 
him that, wrought into a story, even better use might 
be made of the facts now than before, for they had 
developed questions of character and of human nature 
which could not fail to interest. The more he pondered 
upon his acquaintance with Jonathan Tinker, the more 
fascinating the erring mariner became, in his complex 
truth and falsehood, his delicately blended shades of 
artifice and naivete. He must, it was felt, have be- 
lieved to a certain point in his own inventions : nay, 
starting with that groundwork of truth, — the fact 



A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE 155 

that his wife was really dead, and that he had not seen 
his family for two years, — why should he not place 
implicit faith in all the fictions reared upon it? It 
was probable that he felt a real sorrow for her loss, 
and that he found a fantastic consolation in depicting 
the circumstances of her death so that they should 
look like his inevitable misfortunes rather than his 
faults. He might well have repented his offence dur- 
ing those two years of prison ; and why should he not 
now cast their dreariness and shame out of his mem- 
ory, and replace them with the freedom and adventure 
of a two years' voyage to China, — so probable, in all 
respects, that the fact should appear an impossible 
nightmare? In the experiences of his life he had 
abundant material to furnish forth the facts of such a 
voyage, and in the weariness and lassitude that should 
follow a day's walking equally after a two years' voyage 
and two years' imprisonment, he had as much physical 
proof in favor of one hypothesis as the other. It was 
doubtless true, also, as he said, that he had gone to 
his house at dawn, and sat down on the threshold of 
his ruined home ; and perhaps he felt the desire he 
had expressed to see his daughter, with a purpose of 
beginning life anew ; and it may have cost him a veri- 
table pang when he found that his little ones did not 
know him. All the sentiments of the situation were 
such as might persuade a lively fancy of the truth of 
its own inventions ; and as he heard these continually 
repeated by the contributor in their search for Mr. 
Hapford, they must have acquired an objective force 
and repute scarcely to be resisted. At the same time, 
there were touches of nature throughout Jonathan 
Tinker's narrative which could not fail to take the 
faith of another. The contributor, in reviewing it, 



156 WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 

thought it particularly charming that his mariner had 
not overdrawn himself, or attempted to paint his 
character otherwise than as it probably was ; that he 
had shown his ideas and practices o£ life to be those 
of a second mate, nor more nor less, without the gloss 
of regret or the pretences to refinement that might be 
pleasing to the supposed philanthropist with whom he 
had fallen in. Captain Gooding was of course a true 
portrait ; and there was nothing in Jonathan Tinker's 
statement of the relations of a second mate to his su- 
periors and his inferiors which did not agree perfectly 
with what the contributor had just read in " Two 
Years before the Mast," — a book which had possibly 
cast its glamour upon the adventure. He admired also 
the just and perfectly characteristic air of grief in 
the bereaved husband and father, — those occasional 
escapes from the sense of loss into a brief hilarity 
and forgetfulness, and those relapses into the hover- 
ing gloom, which every one has observed in this poor, 
crazy human nature when oppressed by sorrow, and 
which it would have been hard to simulate. But, 
above all, he exulted in that supreme stroke of the 
imagination given by the second mate when, at part- 
ing, he said he believed he would go down and sleep 
on board the vessel. In view of this, the State's Prison 
theory almost appeared a malign and foolish scandal. 
Yet even if this theory were correct, was the second 
mate wholly answerable for beginning his life again 
with the imposture he had practised ? The contributor 
had either so fallen in love with the literary advan- 
tages of his forlorn deceiver that he would see no 
moral obliquity in him, or he had touched a subtler 
verity at last in pondering the affair. It seemed now 
no longer a farce, but had a pathos which, though 



A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE 157 

very difPerent from that of its first aspect, was hardly- 
less tragical. Knowing with what coldness, or at the 
best, uncandor, he (representing Society in its attitude 
toward convicted Error) would have met the fact had 
it been owned to him at first, he had not virtue enough 
to condemn the illusory stranger, who must have been 
helpless to make at once evident any repentance he 
felt or good purpose he cherished. Was it not one of 
the saddest consequences of the man's past, — a dark 
necessity of misdoing, — that, even with the best will 
in the world to retrieve himself, his first endeavor must 
involve a wrong ? Might he not, indeed, be considered 
a martyr, in some sort, to his own admirable impulses? 
I can see clearly enough where the contributor was 
astray in this reasoning, but I can also understand 
how one accustomed to value realities only as they 
resembled fables should be won with such pensive 
sophistry; and I can certainly sympathize with his 
feeling that the mariner's failure to reappear accord- 
ing to appointment added its final and most agreeable 
charm to the whole afPair, and completed the mystery 
from which the man emerged and which swallowed 
him up again. 

NOTES 

Mr. Charles Reade : — An English novelist (1814-1884). 

protdg^ (French) : — A person under the care of another. 
The form given here is masculine ; the feminine is protegee. 

coup de theatre : — (French) A very striking scene, such 
as might appear on the stage. 

Two Years before the Mast : — A sea story written by 
R. H. Dana, about 1840. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

What is a romance ? The phrase already mentioned refers to 
earlier parts of the book Suburban Sketches, from which this 



158 WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 

story is taken. What effect does the author gain by the ring at 
the door-bell ? How does he give you a quick and vivid idea of the 
visitor ? What significance do the man's clothes have in the story? 
By means of what devices does the author interest you in the 
stranger ? Do adventures really happen in everyday life ? Why 
does the author speak of one's own "register " ? Mr. Howells 
has written a number of novels in which he pictures ordinary 
people, and shows the romance of commonplace events. Why 
does the listener " exult " ? How does the man's story affect you ? 
What is gained by having it told in his own words ? Is Jonathan 
Tinker's toast a happy one ? What does the contributor mean 
by saying that he would have been a good subject for " the pred- 
atory arts " ? The last horse-car : To Boston ; the scene is prob- 
ably laid in Cambridge where Mr. Howells lived for some years. 
In what way does the sailor's language emphasize the pathetic 
quality of his story ? How was the man " literature made to the 
author's hand " ? What are the " national traditions " mentioued 
in connection with the boy ? Why was the story regarded as 
" too perfect " when it was related at home ? In what way was 
Julia Tinker's face " disappointing " ? How does the author feel 
when he hears the facts in the case ? Why does he resolve never 
to do a good deed again ? The author gives two reasons why 
Jonathan Tinker did not tell the truth : what seems to you the 
real reason ? Characterize Tinker in your own words. Is the end- 
ing of the selection satisfactory ? Did you think that Tinker 
would come back ? Can you make a little drama of this story ? 



THEME SUBJECTS 

An Old Sailor What Becomes of the Ex-Con- 
People who do not Tell the victs ? 
Truth The Jail 
The Forsaken House A Stranger in Town 
Asking Directions A Late Visitor 
A Tramp What I Think of Jonathan Tinker 
The Lost Address The Disadvantages of a Lively 
An Evenmg at Home. Imagination 
A Sketch of Julia Tinker Unwelcome 
The Surprise If Jonathan Tinker had Told 
A Long-lost Relative the Truth 



A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE 159 

The Lie A Walk in Dark Streets 

A Call at a Stranger's House The Sea Captain 
An Unfortunate Man Watching the Sailors 



SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING 

A Late Visitor : — Try to write this in the form of a dia- 
logue or little play. The host is reading or conversing in the 
family sitting-room, when the doorbell rings. There is a con- 
versation at the door, and then the caller is brought in. Perhaps 
the stranger has some evil design. Perhaps he (or she) is lost, 
or in great need. Perhaps he turns out to be in some way con- 
nected with the family. Think out the plan of the dialogue pretty 
thoroughly before you begin to write. It is possible that you will 
want to add a second act in which the results of the first are 
shown. Plan your stage directions with the help of some other 
drama, as, for instance, 'that given on page 52. 

The Lie : ^ — This also may be written in the form of a slight 
dramatic composition. There might be a few brief scenes, ac- 
cording to the following plan : — 

Scene 1 : The lie is told. 

Scene 2 : It makes trouble. 

Scene 3 : It is found out. 

Scene 4 : Complications are untangled, and the He is atoned for. 

(Perhaps this scene can be combined with the preceding.) 

A Long-lost Relative : — This may be taken from a real 
or an imaginary circumstance. Tell of the first news that the 
relative is coming. Where has he (or she) been during the past 
years ? Speak of the period before the relative arrives : the con- 
jectures as to his appearance ; the preparations made ; the con- 
versation regarding him. Tell of his arrival. Is his appearance 
such as has been expected ? Describe him rather fully. What 
does he say and do? Does he make himself agreeable? Are his 
ideas in any way peculiar ? Do the neighbors like him ? Give 
some of the incidents of his visit. Tell about his departure. Are 
the family glad or sorry to have him go ? What is said about 
him after he has gone ? What has been heard of him since ? 

^ If this is thought too difficult, some of the exercises on pages 316- 
318 may be used. 



160 WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 

COLLATERAL READINGS 

Suburban Sketches William Dean Howells 

A Boy's Town " " " 

The Rise of Silas Lapham .... " " " 

The Minister's Charge " «' " 

Their Wedding Journey " " " 

The Lady of the Aroostook .... " " " 

Venetian Life " " « 

Italian Journeys " " " 

The Mouse Trap (a play) .... " " " 

Evening Dress " " " " 

The Register " " " «« 

The Elevator " « " " 

Unexpected Guests " " " " 

The Albany Depot " ..... " " " 

Literary Friends and Acquaintances . " " " 

Their California Uncle Bret Harte 

A Lodging for the Night R. L. Stevenson 

Kidnapped " " 

Ebb Tide " " 

Enoch Arden Alfred Tennyson 

Rip Van Winkle Washington Irving 

Wakefield . Nathaniel Hawthorne 

Two Years before the Mast . . . . R. H. Dana 

Out of Gloucester J. B. Connolly 

Jean Valjean (from Les Miserables) . Victor Hugo (Ed. S. E. 

Wiltse) 
Historic Towns of New England (Cam- 
bridge) L. P. Powell (Ed.) 

Old Cambridge . . T. W. Higginson 

American Authors at Home, pp. 193- 

211 J. L. and J. B. Gilder 

American Authors and their Homes, 

pp. 99-110 . . . F. W. Halsey 

American Writers of To-day, pp. 43- 

68 H. C. Vedder 

Bookman, 17:342 (Portrait); 35: 114, April, 1912; Current 
Literature, 42:49, January, 1907 (Portrait) 



THE WILD RIDE 

LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY 

/ hear in my hearty I hear in its ominous pulses 
All clay, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses. 
All night, from their stalls, the importunate paioing 
and neighing. 

Let cowards and laggards fall back! but alert to the 

saddle, 
Weather-worn and abreast, go men of our galloping 

legion, 
With a stirrup-cup each to the lily of women that loves 

him. 

The trail is through dolour and dread, over crags and 

morasses ; 
There are shapes by the way, there are things that 

appal or entice us : 
What odds ? We are Knights of the Grail, we are 

vowed to the riding. 

Thought's self is a vanishing wing, and joy is a cob- 
web. 

And friendship a flower in the dust, and glory a sun- 
beam : 

Not here is our prize, nor, alas ! after these our pur- 
suing. 

A dipping of plumes, a tear, a shake of the bridle, 
A passing salute to this world and her pitiful beauty : 



162 LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY 

We hurry with never a word in the track of our 
fathers. 

(/ hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous jjulses 
All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses. 
All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing 
and neighing.') 

We spur to a land of no name, out-racing the storm- 
wind; 

We leap to the infinite dark like sparks from the 
anvil. 

Thou leadest, O God ! All 's well with Thy troopers 
that follow. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

This poem is somewhat like the Road-Hymn for the Start, on 
page 184. It is about those people who go forward eagerly into 
the work of the world, without fearing, and without shrinking 
from difficulties. Read it through completely, trying to get its 
meaning. Regard the lines in italic as a kind of chorus, and study 
the meaning of the other stanzas first. Who are the galloping 
legions ? A stirrup-cup was a draught of wine, taken just before 
a rider began his journey ; it was usually drimk to some one's 
health. Is dolour a common word ? Is it good here ? Try to put 
into your own words the ideas in the " land of no name," and 
" the infinite dark," remembering what is said above about the 
general meaning of the poem. What picture and what idea do 
you get from " like sparks from the anvil " ? Now go back to 
the lines in italic, and look for their meaning. 

What do you notice about the length of the words in this 
poem ? Why has the author used this kind of words ? Notice 
carefully how the sound and the sense are made harmonious. 
Look for the rhyme. How does the poem differ from most short 
poems ? 

Read the verses aloud, trying to make your reading suggest 
"the hoofs of invisible horses." 



THE WILD RIDE 163 

OTHER POEMS TO READ 

A Troop of the Guard Hermann Hagedorn 

How They Brought the Good News 

from Ghent to Aix Robert Browning 

Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr, " " 

Reveille Bret Harte 

A Song of the Road Richard Watson Gilder 

The House and the Road J. P. Peabody 

The Mystic Gale Young Rice 

(In The Little Book of Modern Verse, Ed. by J. B. Ritten- 
house.) 

A Winter Ride Amy Lowell 

(In The Little Book of Modern Verse.) 

The Ride Clinton Seollard 

(In Songs of Sunrise Lands.) 



CHRISTMAS IN THE WOODS 

DALLAS LORE SHARP 

(In The Lay of the Land) 

On the night before this particular Christmas every 
creature of the woods that could stir was up and 
stirring; for over the old snow was falling swiftly, 
silently, a soft, fresh covering that might mean a 
hungry Christmas unless the dinner were had before 
morning. 

But when the morning dawned, a cheery Christmas 
sun broke across the great gum swamp, lighting the 
snowy boles and soft-piled limbs of the giant trees 
with indescribable glory, and pouring, a golden flood, 
into the deep spongy bottoms below. It would be a 
perfect Christmas in the woods, clear, mild, stirless, 
with silent footing for me, and everywhere the telltale 
snow. 

And everywhere the Christmas spirit, too. As I 
paused among the pointed cedars of the pasture, look- 
ing down into the cripple at the head of the swamp, 
a clear wild whistle rang in the thicket, followed by 
a flash through the alders like a tongue of fire, as a 
cardinal grosbeak shot down to the tangle of green- 
brier and magnolia under the slope. It was a fleck of 
flaming summer. As warm as summer, too, the stag- 
horn sumac burned on the crest of the ridge against 
the group of holly trees, — trees as fresh as April, and 
aU aglow with berries. The woods were decorated for 
the holy day. The gentleness of the soft new snow 
touched everything ; cheer and good-will lighted the 



CHRISTMAS IN THE WOODS 165 

unclouded sky and warmed the thick depths of the 
evergreens, and blazed in the crimson-berried bushes of 
the ilex and alder. The Christmas woods were glad. 

Nor was the gladness all show, mere decoration. 
There was real cheer in abundance ; for I was back 
in the old home woods, back along the Cohansey, back 
where you can pick persimmons off the trees at Christ- 
mas. There are persons who say the Lord might have 
made a better berry than the strawberry, but He did 
n't. Perhaps He did n't make the strawberry at all. But 
He did make the Cohansey Creek persimmon, and He 
made it as good as He could. Nowhere else under the 
sun can you find such persimmons as these along the 
creek, such richness of flavor, such gummy, candied 
quality, woodsy, wild, crude, — especially the fruit of 
two particular trees on the west bank, near Lupton's 
Pond. But they never come to this perfection, never 
quite lose their pucker, until midwinter, — as if they 
had been intended for the Christmas table of the 
woods. 

It had been nearly twenty years since I crossed this 
pasture of the cedars on my way to the persimmon 
trees. The cows had been crossing every year, yet not 
a single new crook had they worn in the old paths. 
But I was half afraid as I came to the fence where I 
could look down upon the pond and over to the per- 
simmon trees. Not one of the Luptons, who owned 
pasture and pond and trees, had ever been a boy, so 
far as I could remember, or had ever eaten of those 
persimmons. Would they have left the trees through 
all these years ? 

I pushed through the hedge of cedars and stopped 
for ail instant, confused. The very pond was gone ! 
and the trees ! No, there was the pond, — but how 



166 DALLAS LORE SHARP 

small the patch of water! and the two persimmon trees? 
The bush and undergrowth had grown these twenty 
years. Which way — Ah, there they stand, only their 
leafless tops showing ; but see the hard angular limbs, 
how closely globed with fruit ! how softly etched upon 
the sky ! 

I hurried around to the trees and climbed the one 
with the two broken branches, up, clear up to the top, 
into the thick of the persimmons. 

Did I say it had been twenty years ? That could not 
be. Twenty years would have made me a man, and 
this sweet, real taste in my mouth only a hoy could 
know. But there was college, and marriage, a Mass- 
achusetts farm, four boys of my own, and - — no mat- 
ter ! it could not have been years — twenty years — 
since. It was only yesterday that I last climbed this 
tree and ate the rich rimy fruit frosted with a Christ- 
mas snow. 

And yet, could it have been yesterday? It was 
storming, and I clung here in the swirling snow and 
heard the wild ducks go over in their hurry toward 
the bay. Yesterday, and all this change in the vast 
treetop world, this huddled pond, those narrowed 
meadows, that shrunken creek! I should have eaten the 
persimmons and climbed straight down, not stopped 
to gaze out upon the pond, and away over the dark 
ditches to the creek. But reaching out quickly I gath- 
ered another handful, — and all was yesterday again. 

I filled both pockets of my coat and climbed down. 
I kept those persimmons and am tasting them to-night. 
Lupton's Pond may fill to a puddle, the meadows may 
shrivel, the creek dry up and disappear, and old Time 
may even try his wiles on me. But I shall foil him to 
the end ; for I am carrying still in my pocket some of 



CHRISTMAS IN THE WOODS 167 

yesterday's persimmons, — persimmons that ripened 
in the rime of a winter when I was a boy. 

High and alone in a bare persimmon tree for one's 
dinner hardly sounds like a merry Christmas. But I 
was not alone. I had noted the fresh tracks beneath 
the tree before I climbed up, and now I saw that the 
snow had been partly brushed from several of the large 
limbs as the 'possum had moved about in the tree for 
his Christmas dinner. We were guests at the same 
festive board, and both of us at Nature's invitation. 
It mattered not that the 'possum had eaten and gone 
this hour or more. Such is good form in the woods. 
He was expecting me, so he came early, out of mod- 
esty ; and, that I too might be entirely at my ease, he 
departed early, leaving his greetings for me in the 
snow. 

Thus I was not alone ; here was good company and 
plenty of it. I never lack a companion in the woods 
when I can pick up a trail. The 'possum and 1 ate 
together. And this was just the fellowship I needed, 
this sharing the persimmons with the 'possum. I had 
broken bread, not with the 'possum only, but with all 
the out-of-doors. I was now fit to enter the woods, for 
I was filled with good-will and persimmons, as full as 
the 'possum ; and putting myself under his gentle guid- 
ance, I got down upon the ground, took up his clumsy 
trail, and descended toward the swamp. Such an en- 
try is one of the particular joys of the winter. To go 
in with a fox, a mink, or a 'possum through the door 
of the woods is to find yourself at home. Any one can 
get inside the out-of-doors, as the grocery boy or the 
census man gets inside our houses. You can bolt in 
at any time on business. A trail, however, is Nature's 
invitation. There may be other, better beaten paths 



168 DALLAS LORE SHARP 

for mere feet. But go softly with the 'possum, and at 
the threshold you are met by the spirit of the wood, 
you are made the guest of the open, silent, secret out- 
of-doors. 

I went down with the 'possum. He had traveled 
home in leisurely fashion and without fear, as his 
tracks plainly showed. He was full of persimmons. A 
good happy world this, where such fare could be had 
for the picking ! What need to hurry home, except 
one were in danger of falling asleep by the way? So 
I thought, too, as I followed his winding path , and 
if I was tracking him to his den, it was only to wake 
him for a moment with the compliments of the season. 
But it was not even a momentary disturbance ; for 
when I finally found him in his hollow gum, he was 
sound asleep, and only half realized that some one was 
poking him gently in the ribs and wishing him a merry 
Christmas. 

The 'possum had led me to the center of the empty, 
hollow swamp, where the great-boled gums lifted their 
branches like a timbered, unshingled roof between me 
and the wide sky. Far away through the spaces of the 
rafters I saw a pair of wheeling buzzards and, under 
them, in lesser circles, a broad-winged hawk. Here, at 
the feet of the tall, clean trees, looking up through the 
leafless limbs, I had something of a measure for the 
flight of the birds. The majesty and the mystery of 
the distant buoyant wings were singularly impressive. 

I have seen the turkey- buzzard sailing the skies 
on the bitterest winter days. To-day, however, could 
hardly be called winter. Indeed, nothing yet had felt 
the pinch of the cold. There was no hunger yet in the 
swamp, though this new snow had scared the rac- 
coons out, and their half-human tracks along the mar- 



CHRISTMAS IN THE WOODS 169 

gin of the swamp stream showed that, if not hungry, 
they at least feared that they might be. 

For a coon hates snow. He will invariably sleep off 
the first light snowfalls, and even in the late winter 
he will not venture forth in fresh snow unless driven 
by hunger or some other dire need. Perhaps, like a 
cat or a hen, he dislikes the wetting of his feet. Or it 
may be that the soft snow makes bad hunting — for 
him. The truth is, I believe, that such a snow makes 
too good hunting for the dogs and the gunner. The 
new snow tells too clear a story. His home is no inac- 
cessible den among the ledges ; only a hollow in some 
ancient oak or tupelo. Once within, he is safe from the 
dogs; but the long fierce fight for life taught him gen- 
erations ago that the nest-tree is a fatal trap when be- 
hind the dogs come the axe and the gun. So he has 
grown wary and enduring. He waits until the snow 
grows crusty, when, without sign, and almost without 
scent, he can slip forth among the long shadows and 
prowl to the edge of dawn. 

Skirting the stream out toward the higher back 
woods, I chanced to spy a bunch of snow in one of 
the great sour gums, that I thought was an old nest. 
A second look showed me tiny green leaves, then white 
berries, then mistletoe. 

It was not a surprise, for I had found it here before, 
— a long, long time before. It was back in my school- 
boy days, back beyond those twenty years, that I 
first stood here under the mistletoe and had my first 
romance. There was no chandelier, no pretty girl, in 
that romance, — only a boy, the mistletoe, the giant 
trees, and the somber, silent swamp. Then there was 
his discovery, the thrill of deep delight, and the won- 
der of his knowledge of the strange unnatural plant ! 



170 DALLAS LORE SHARP 

All plants had been plants to him until, one day, he 
read the life of the mistletoe. But that was English 
mistletoe ; so the boy's wonder world of plant life 
was still as far away as Mars, when, rambling alone 
through the swamp along the creek, he stopped under 
a big curious bunch of green, high up in one of the 
gums, and — made his first discovery. 

So the boy climbed up again this Christmas Day 
at the peril of his precious neck, and brought down a 
bit of that old romance. 

I followed the stream along through the swamp to 
the open meadows, and then on under the steep wooded 
hillside that ran up to the higher land of corn and 
melon fields. Here at the foot of the slope the winter 
sun lay warm, and here in the sheltered briery border 
I came upon the Christmas birds. 

There was a great variety of them, feeding and 
preening and chirping in the vines. The tangle was 
a-twitter with their quiet, cheery talk. Such a medley 
of notes you could not hear at any other season outside 
a city bird store. How far the different species under- 
stood one another I should like to know, and whether 
the hum of voices meant sociability to them, as it cer- 
tainly meant to me. Doubtless the first cause of their 
flocking here was the sheltered warmth and the great 
numbers of berry-laden bushes, for there was no lack 
either of abundance or variety on the Christmas 
table. 

In sight from where I stood hung bunches of 
withering chicken or frost grapes, plump clusters of 
blue-black berries of the greenbrier, and limbs of the 
smooth winterberry bending with their flaming fruit. 
There were bushes of crimson ilex, too, trees of fruit- 
ing dogwood and holly, cedars in berry, dwarf sumac 



CHRISTMAS IN THE WOODS 171 

and seedy sedges, while patches on the wood slopes 
uncovered by the sun were spread with trailing par- 
tridge berry and the coral-fruited wintergreen. I had 
eaten part of my dinner with the 'possum ; I picked a 
quantity of these wintergreen berries, and continued 
my meal with the birds. And they also had enough 
and to spare. 

Among the birds in the tangle was a large flock of 
northern fox sparrows, whose vigorous and continuous 
scratching in the bared spots made a most lively and 
cheery commotion. Many of them were splashing 
about in tiny pools of snow-water, melted partly by 
the sun and partly by the warmth of their bodies as 
they bathed. One would hop to a softening bit of snow 
at the base of a tussock, keel over and begin to flop, 
soon sending up a shower of sparkling drops from his 
rather chilly tub. A winter snow-water bath seemed 
a necessity, a luxury indeed ; for they all indulged, 
splashing with the same purpose and zest that they 
put into their scratching among the leaves. 

A much bigger splashing drew me quietly through 
the bushes to find a marsh hawk giving himself a 
Christmas souse. The scratching, washing, and talk- 
ing of the birds ; the masses of green in the cedars, 
holly, and laurels ; the glowing colors of the berries 
against the snow ; the blue of the sky, and the golden 
warmth of the light made Christmas in the heart of 
the noon that the very swamp seemed to feel. 

Three months later there was to be scant picking 
here, for this was the beginning of the severest winter 
I ever knew. From this very ridge, in February, I 
had reports of berries gone, of birds starving, of whole 
coveys of quail frozen dead in the snow ; but neither 
the birds nor I dreamed to-day of any such hunger and 



172 DALLAS LORE SHARP 

death. A flock of robins whirled into the cedars above 
me ; a pair of cardinals whistled back and forth ; tree 
sparrows, juncos, nuthatches, chickadees, and cedar- 
birds cheeped among the trees and bushes ; and from 
the farm lands at the top of the slope rang the calls 
of meadowlarks. 

Halfway up the hill I stopped under a blackjack 
oak where, in the thin snow, there were signs of some- 
thing like a Christmas revel. The ground was sprinkled 
with acorn shells and trampled over with feet of sev- 
eral kinds and sizes, — quail, jay, and partridge feet ; 
rabbit, squirrel, and mice feet, all over the snow as 
the feast of acorns had gone on. Hundreds of the 
acorns were lying about, gnawed away at the cup end, 
where the shell was thinnest, many of them further 
broken and cleaned out by the birds. 

As I sat studying the signs in the snow, my eye 
caught a tiny trail leading out from the others straight 
away toward a broken pile of cordwood. The tracks 
were planted one after the other, so directly in line as 
to seem like the prints of a single foot. " That 's a 
weasel's trail," I said, " the death's-head at this feast," 
and followed it slowly to the wood. A shiver crept over 
me as I felt, even sooner than I saw, a pair of small 
sinister eyes fixed upon mine. The evil pointed head, 
heavy but alert, and with a suggestion of fierce strength 
out of all relation to the slender body, was watching 
me from between the sticks of cordwood. And so he 
had been watching the mice and birds and rabbits 
feasting under the tree ! 

I packed a ball of snow round and hard, slipped 
forward upon my knees, and hurled it. " Spat ! " it 
struck the end of a stick within an inch of the ugly 
head, filling the crevice with snow. Instantly the head 



CHRISTMAS IN THE WOODS 173 

appeared at another crack, and another ball struck 
viciously beside it. Now it was back where it first ap- 
peared, and did not flinch for the next, or the next 
ball. The third went true, striking with a " chug " 
and packing the crack. But the black, hating eyes 
were still watching me a foot lower down. 

It is not all peace and good- will in the Christmas 
woods. But there is more of peace and good-will than 
of any other spirit. The weasels are few. More friendly 
and timid eyes were watching me than bold and mur- 
derous. It was foolish to want to kill — even the 
weasel. For one's woods are what one makes them ; 
and so I let the man with the gun, who chanced along, 
think that I had turned boy again, and was snowball- 
ing the woodpile, just for the fun of trying to hit the 
end of the biggest stick. 

I was glad he had come. As he strode off with his 
stained bag, I felt kindlier toward the weasel. There 
were worse in the woods than he, — worse, because all 
of their killing was pastime. The weasel must kill to 
live, and if he gloated over the kill, why, what fault 
of his ? But the other weasel, the one with the blood- 
stained bag, he killed for the love of killing. I was 
glad he was gone. 

The crows were winging over toward their great 
roost in the pines when I turned toward the town. 
They, too, had had good picking along the creek flats 
and ditches of the meadows. Their powerful wing- 
beats and constant play told of full crops and no fear 
for the night, already softly gray across the white si- 
lent fields. The air was crisper ; the snow began to 
crackle under foot ; the twigs creaked and rattled as I 
brushed along ; a brown beech leaf wavered down and 
skated with a thin scratch over the crust ; and pure as 



174 DALLAS LORE SHARP 

the snow-wrapped crystal world, and sweet as the soft 
gray twilight, came the call of a quail. 

The voices, colors, odors, and forms of summer were 
gone. The very face of things had changed ; all had 
been reduced, made plain, simple, single, pure ! There 
was less for the senses, but how much keener now 
their joy ! The wide landscape, the frosty air, the 
tinkle of tiny icicles, and, out of the quiet of the 
falling twilight, the voice of the quail ! 

There is no day but is beautiful in the woods ; and 
none more beautiful than one like this Christmas Day, 
— warm and still and wrapped, to the round red ber- 
ries of the holly, in the magic of the snow. 

NOTES 

cripple : — A dense thicket in swampy land. 
good-wUl:— See the Bible, Luke 2 : 13, 14. 
Cohansey : — A creek in southern New Jersey. 

QUESTIONS FOR STUDY 

Read the selection through once without stopping. Afterward, 
go through it with these questions : — 

Why might the snow mean a " hungry Christmas " ? Note the 
color words in paragraph tliree : Of what value are they ? Why 
does the pond seem small to the visitor ? Does the author mean 
anything more than persimmons in the last part of the paragraph 
beginning " I filled both pockets " ? What sort of man do 
you think he is ? What is the meaning of " broken bread " ? 
What is meant by entering the woods "at Nature's invitation " ? 
What do you understand by " the long fierce fight for life " ? 
What was it that the coon learned " generations ago " ? What 
does the author mean here ? Do you know anything of the Dar- 
winian theory of life ? What has it to do with what is said here 
about the coon ? How does the author make you feel the variety 
and liveliness of the bird life which he observes? What shows 
his keenness of sight? What do you kuow about weasels ? Is it* 



CHRISTMAS IN THE WOODS 175 

true that " one's woods are what one makes them " ? Do you 
think the author judges the hunter too harshly ? How does the 
author make you feel the charm of the late afternoon ? Go 
through the selection and see how many different subjects are 
discussed! How is the unity of the piece preserved ? Notice the 
pictures in the piece. What feeling prevails in the selection ? 
How can you tell whether the author really loves nature ? Could 
you write a sketch somewhat like this, telling what you saw 
during a walk in the woods ? 

THEME SUBJECTS 

A Walk in the Winter Woods Making Christmas Gifts 

An Outdoor Christmas Tree Feeding the Birds 

A Lumber Camp at Christmas The Christmas Guest 

The Winter Birds Turkey and Plum Pudding 

Tracking a Rabbit The Children's Christmas Party 

Hunting Deer in Winter Christmas on the Farm 

A Winter Landscape The Christmas Tree at the 
Home Decorations from the Schoolhouse 

Winter Fields What he Found in his Stocking 

Wild Apples Bringing Home the Christmas 
Fishing through the Ice Tree 

A Winter Camp Christmas in the South 

A Strange Christmas Christmas away from Home 

Playing Santa Claus A " Sensible " Christmas 

A Snow Picnic • Christmas at our House 

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING 

A Walk in the Winter Woods : — Tell of a real or 
imaginary stroll in the woods when the snow is on the ground. 
If possible, plan the theme some time before you write, and 
obtain your material through actual and recent observation. In 
everything you say, be careful and accurate. You might speak 
first of the time of day at which your walk was taken ; the 
weather ; the condition of the snow. Speak of the trees : the 
kinds ; how they looked. Were any of the trees weighted with 
snow? Describe the bushes, and the berries and grasses ; use 
color words, if possible, as Mr. Sharp does. What sounds did 
you hear in the woods ? Did you see any tracks of animals ? If 



176 DALLAS LORE SHARP 

so, tell about these tracks, and show what they indicated. De- 
scribe the animals that you saw, and tell what they were doing. 
What did you gather regarding the way in which the animals 
live in winter ? Speak in the same way of the birds. Re-read 
what Mr. Sharp says about the birds he saw, and try to make 
your own account clear and full of action. Did you see any signs 
of human inhabitants or visitors ? If so, tell about them. Did 
you find anything to eat in the woods ? Speak briefly of your 
return home. Had the weather changed since your entering the 
woods ? Was there any alteration in the landscape ? How did 
you feel after your walk ? 

The "Winter Birds : — For several days before writing 
this theme, prepare material for it by observation and reading. 
Watch the birds, and see what they are doing and how they 
live. Use a field glass if you can get one, and take careful notes 
on what you see. Make especial use of any interesting incidents 
that come under your observation. 

When you write, take up each kind of bird separately, and 
tell what you have found out about its winter life : how it looks ; 
where you have seen it ; what it was doing. Speak also of its 
food and shelter ; the perils it endures ; its intelligence ; anec- 
dotes about it. Make your theme simple and lively, as if you 
were talking to some one about the birds. Try to use good color 
words and sound words, and expressions that give a vivid idea 
of the activities and behavior of the birds. 

When you have finished, lay the theme aside for a time ; then 
read it again and see how you can touch it up to make it clearer 
and more straightforward. 

Christmas at our House : — Write as if you were tell- 
ing of some particular occasion, although you may perhaps be 
combining the events of several Christmas days. Tell of the 
preparations for Christmas : the planning; the cooking; the whis- 
pering of secrets. Make as much use of conversation as possi- 
ble, and do not hesitate to use even very small details and little 
anecdotes. Perhaps you will wish to tell of the hanging of the 
stockings on Christmas Eve ; if there are children in the family, 
tell what they did and said. Write as vividly as possible of 
Christmas morning, and the finding of the gifts ; try to bring 
out the confusion and the happiness of opening the parcels and 



CHRISTMAS IN THE WOODS 177 

displaying the presents. Quote some of the remarks directly, 
and speak of particularly pleasing or absurd gifts. Go on and 
tell of the sports and pleasures of the day. Speak of the guests, 
describing some of them, and telling what they said and did. 
Try to bring out contrasts here. Put as much emphasis as you 
wish upon the dinner, and the quantities of good things con- 
sumed. Try to quote the remarks of some of the people at 
■ the table. If your theme has become rather long, you might 
close it by a brief account of the dispersing of the family after 
dinner. You might, however, complete your account of the day 
by telling of the evening, with its enjoyments and its weari- 
ness. 

COLLATERAL READINGS 

"Wild Life Near Home D. L. Sharp 

A Watcher in the Woods " 

The Lay of the Land " 

Winter « 

The Face of the Fields " 

The Fall of the Year « 

Roof and Meadow " 

Wild Life in the Rockies Enos A. Mills 

Kindred of the Wild C. G. D. Roberts 

Watchers of the Trail " " " 

Haunters of the Silences « « a 

The Ways of Wood Folk W. J. Long 

Eye Spy ... • W. H. Gibson 

Sharp Eyes « " 

Birds in the Bush Bradford Torrey 

Everyday Birds " " 

Nature's Invitation " " 

Bird Stories from Burroughs (selections) . John Burroughs 

Winter Sunshine " •' 

Pepacton . . . , " " 

Riverby " « 

Wake-Robin «' « 

Signs and Seasons " " 

How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar . Bret Harte 

Santa Claus's Partner T. N. Page 

The First Christmas Tree Henry Van Dyke 

The Other Wise Man " « 



178 DALLAS LORE SHARP 

The Old Peabody Pew K. D. Wiggin 

Miss Santa Claus of the Pullman .... Annie F. Johnson 

Christmas Zona Gale 

A Christmas Mystery W. J. Locke 

Christmas Eve on Lonesome John Fox, Jr. 

By the Christmas Fire S. M. Crothers 

Colonel Carter's Christmas F. H. Smith 

Christmas Jenny (in A New England Nun) . Mary E. Wilkins 

A Christmas Sermon R. L. Stevenson 

The Boy who Brought Christmas .... Alice Morgan 

Christmas Stories Charles Dickens 

The Christmas Guest Selma Lagerlof 

The Legend of the Christmas Rose .... " " 



GLOUCESTER MOORS 

WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

A MILE behind is Gloucester town 
Where the fishing fleets put in, 
A mile ahead the land dips down 
And the woods and farms begin. 
Here, where the moors stretch free 
In the high blue afternoon, 
Are the marching sun and talking sea, 
And the racing winds that wheel and flee 
On the flying heels of June. 

Jill-o'er-the-ground is purple blue, 

Blue is the quaker-maid, 

The wild geranium holds its dew 

Long in the boulder's shade. 

Wax-red hangs the cup 

From the huckleberry boughs. 

In barberry bells the grey moths sup. 

Or where the choke-cherry lifts high up 

Sweet bowls for their carouse. 

Over the shelf of the sandy cove 

Beach-peas blossom late. 

By copse and cliff the swallows rove 

Each calling to his mate. 

Seaward the sea-gulls go, 

And the land birds all are here ; 

That green-gold flash was a vireo, 



180 WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

And yonder flame where the marsh-flags grow 

Was a scarlet tanager. 

* 
This earth is not the steadfast place 

We landsmen build upon ; 

From deep to deep she varies pace, 

And while she comes is gone. 

Beneath my feet I feel 

Her smooth bulk heave and dip ; 

With velvet plunge and soft upreel 

She swings and steadies to her keel 

Like a gallant, gallant ship. 

These summer clouds she sets for sail. 

The sun is her masthead light, 

She tows the moon like a pinnace frail 

Where her phospher wake churns bright. 

Now hid, now looming clear, 

On the face of the dangerous blue 

The star fleets tack and wheel and veer, 

But on, but on does the old earth steer 

As if her port she knew. 

God, dear God ! Does she know her port. 

Though she goes so far about ? 

Or blind astray, does she make her sport 

To brazen and chance it out? 

I watched where her captains passed : 

She were better captainless. 

Men in the cabin, before the mast, 

But some were reckless and some aghast. 

And some sat gorged at mess. 

By her battered hatch I leaned and caught 
Sounds from the noisome hold, — 



GLOUCESTER MOORS l&l 

Cursing and sighing of souls distraught 

And cries too sad to be told. 

Then I strove to go down and see ; 

But they said, " Thou art not of us ! " 

I turned to those on the deck with me 

And cried, " Give help ! " But they said, " Let 

be: 
Our ship sails faster thus." 

Jill-o'er-the-ground is purple blue, 

Blue is the quaker-maid, 

The alder clump where the brook comes through 

Breeds cresses in its shade. 

To be out of the moiling street 

With its swelter and its sin ! 

Who has given to me this sweet, 

And given my brother dust to eat ? 

And when will his wage come in? 

Scattering wide or blown in ranks, 
Yellow and white and brown, 
Boats and boats from the fishing banks 
Come home to Gloucester town. 
There is cash to purse and spend, 
There are wives to be embraced. 
Hearts to borrow and hearts to lend. 
And hearts to take and keep to the end, — 
O little sails, make haste ! 

But thou, vast outbound ship of souls. 
What harbor town for thee ? 
What shapes, when thy arriving tolls, 
Shall crowd the banks to see ? 
Shall all the happy shipmates then 



182 WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

Stand singing brotherly ? 
Or shall a haggard ruthless few 
Warp her over and bring her to, 
While the many broken souls of men 
Fester down in the slaver's pen, 
And nothing to say or do ? 

NOTES 

Gloucester town : Gloucester is a seaport town in Massa- 
chusetts, the chief seat of the cod and mackerel fisheries of 
the coast. 

Jill-o'er-the-ground : Ground ivy ; usually written Gill-over- 
ihe-ground. 

Quaker-maid : Quaker ladies ; small blue flowers growing 
low on the ground. 

wax-red : The huckleberry blossom is red and waxy. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

Read the poem slowly through to yourself, getting what you 
can out of it, without trying too hard. Note that after the third 
stanza the earth is compared to a ship. After you have read the 
poem through, go back and study it with the help of the follow- 
ing questions and suggestions : — 

The author is out on the moors not far from the sea : What 
details does he select to make you feel the beauty of the after- 
noon ? What words in the first stanza suggest movement and 
freedom ? Why does the autfior stop to tell about the flowers, 
when he has so many important things to say ? Note a change 
of tone at the beginning of the fourth stanza. What suggests to 
the author that the earth is like a ship ? Why does he say that 
it is not a steadfast place ? How does the fifth stanza remind 
you of The Ancient Mariner f Why does the author speak so 
passionately at the beginning of the sixth stanza? Here he 
wonders whether there is really any plan in the universe, or 
whether things all go by chance. Who are the captains of whom 
he speaks ? What different types of people are represented in 
the last two lines of stanza six ? What is the " noisome hold " 



GLOUCESTER MOORS 183 

of the Earth ship ? Who are those cursing and sighing ? Who 
are they in the line, " But they said, ' Thou art not of us ! '" ? 
Who are they in the next line but one ? Why does the author 
turn back to the flowers in the next few lines ? What is omitted 
from the line beginning "To be out " ? Explain the last three 
lines of stanza eight. How do the ships of Gloucester differ from 
the ship Earth f What is the " arriving " spoken of in the last 
stanza ? What two possibilities does the author suggest as to 
the fate of the ship ? Why does he end his poem with a ques- 
tion ? What is the purpose of the poem ? Why is it considered 
good ? What do you think was the author's feeling about the 
way the poor and helpless are treated ? Read the poem through 
aloud, thinking what each line means. 



ROAD-HYMN FOR THE START 

WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

Leave the early bells at chime, 
Leave the kindled hearth to blaze, 
Leave the trellised panes where children linger out 

the waking-time. 
Leave the forms of sons and fathers trudging through 

the misty ways. 
Leave the sounds of mothers taking up their sweet 
laborious days. 

Pass them by ! even while our soul 
Yearns to them with keen distress. 
Unto them a part is given ; we will strive to see the 

whole. 
Dear shall be the banquet table where their singing 

spirits press ; 
Dearer be our sacred hunger, and our pilgrim loneli- 
ness. 

We have felt the ancient swaying 
Of the earth before the sun, 
On the darkened marge of midnight heard sidereal 

rivers playing ; 
Rash it was to bathe our souls there, but we plunged 

and all was done. 
That is lives and lives behind us — lo, our journey is 
begun ! 



ROAD-HYMN FOR THE START 185 

Careless where our face is set, 
Let us take the open way. 
What we are no tongue has told us : Errand-goers 

who forget ? 
Soldiers heedless of their harry ? Pilgrim people gone 

astray ? 
We have heard a voice cry " Wander ! " That was all 
we heard it say. 

Ask no more : 't is much, 't is much ! 
Down the road the day-star calls ; 
Touched with change in the wide . heavens, like a leaf 

the frost winds touch, 
Flames the failing moon a moment, ere it shrivels 

white and falls ; 
Hid aloft, a wild throat holdeth sweet and sweeter in- 
tervals. 

Leave him still to ease in song 
Half his little heart's unrest : 
Speech is his, but we may journey toward the life for 

which we long. 
God, who gives the bird its anguish, maketh nothing 

manifest. 
But upon our lifted foreheads pours the boon of end- 
less quest. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

Do not be alarmed if you find this a little hard to understand. 
It is expressed in rather figurative language, and one has to 
study it to get its meaning. The poem is about those people who 
look forward constantly to something better, and feel that they 
must always be pressing forward at any cost. Who is repre- 
sented as speaking ? What sort of life are the travelers leaving 
behind them ? Why do they feel a keen distress? What is the 



186 WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

"whole" that they are striving to see? What is their "sacred 
hunger " ? Why is it " dearer " than the feasting of those who 
stay at home? Notice how the third stanza reminds one of 
Gloucester Moors. Look up the word sidereal : Can you tell what it 
means here ? " Lives and lives behind us " means a long time ago ; 
you will perhaps have to ask your teacher for its deeper mean- 
ing. Do the travelers know where they are going? Why do they 
set forth ? Note the description of the dawn in the fifth stanza. 
What is the boon of " endless quest " ? Why is it spoken of as 
a gift (boon) ? Compare the last line of this p6em with the 
last line of The Wild Ride, on page 161. Perhaps you will be 
interested to compare the Road-Hymn with Whitman's The Song 
of the Open Road. 

Do the meter and verse-form seem appropriate here ? Is any- 
thing gained by the difference in the length of the lines ? 



ON A SOLDIER FALLEN IN THE 
PHILIPPINES 

WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

Streets of the roaring town, 

Hush for him, hush, be still! 

He comes, who was stricken down 

Doing the word of our will. 

Hush ! Let him have his state, 

Give him his soldier's crown. 

The grists of trade can wait 

Their grinding at the mill, 
But he cannot wait for his honor, now the trumpet has 

been blown ; 
Wreathe pride now for his granite brow, lay love on 
his breast of stone. 

Toll ! Let the great bells toll 

Till the clashing air is dim. 

Did we wrong this parted soul ? 

We will make it up to him. 

Toll ! Let him never guess 

What work we set him to. 

Laurel, laurel, yes ; 

He did what we bade him do. 
Praise, and never a whispered hint but the fight he 

fought was good ; 
Never a word that the blood on his sword was his 
country's own heart's-blood. 



188 WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

A flag for the soldier's bier 

Who dies that his land may live ; 

O, banners, banners here, 

That he doubt not nor misgive ! 

That he heed not from the tomb 

The evil days draw near 

When the nation, robed in gloom, 

With its faithless past shall strive. 
Let him never dream that his bullet's scream went 

wide of its island mark, 
Home to the heart of his darling land where she 
stumbled and sinned in the dark. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

What is " his state," in line five ? How has the soldier been 
" wronged " ? Does the author think that the fight in the Phil- 
ippines has not been " good " ? Why ? What does he mean by the 
last line of stanza two ? What " evil days " are those mentioned 
in stanza three ? Have they come yet ? What " faithless past " 
is meant ? Do you think that the United States has treated the 
Philippines imfairly ? ^ 

COLLATERAL READINGS 

Gloucester Moors and Other Poems . William Vaughn Moody 

Poems and Plays of William Vaughn 
Moody (2 vols. Biographical intro- 
duction) John M. Manley (Ed.) 

Letters of William Vaughn Moody . Daniel Mason (Ed.) 

Out of Gloucester J. B. Connolly 

For biography, criticism, and portraits of William Vaughn 

Moody, consult : Atlantic Monthly, 98 : 326, September, 1906; 

World's Work, 13 : 8258, December, 1906 (Portrait); Century, 

73 : 431 (Portrait) ; Reader, 10 : 173; Bookman, 32 : 253 (Portrait.) 

1 Note : The teacher might read aloud a part of the Ode in Time 
of Hesitation, by Moody. In its entirety it is almost too difficult for 
the pupils to get much out of ; but it has some vigorous things to say 
about the war in the Philippines. 



THE COON DOG 

SAEAH ORNE JEWETT 

(In The Queen's Twin and Other Stories) 

I 

In the early dusk of a warm September evening the 
bats were flitting to and fro, as if it were still sum- 
mer, under the great elm that overshadowed Isaac 
Brown's house, on the Dipford road. Isaac Brown 
himself, and his old friend and neighbor John York, 
were leaning against the fence, 

" Frost keeps off late, don't it ? " said John York. 
" I laughed when I first heard about the circus comin'; 
I thought 't was so unusual late in the season. Turned 
out well, however. Everybody I noticed was returnin' 
with a palm-leaf fan. Guess they found 'em useful 
under the tent ; 't was a master hot day. I saw old 
lady Price with her hands full o' those free advertisin' 
fans, as if she was layin' in a stock against next sum- 
mer. Well, I expect she '11 live to enjoy 'em." 

" I was right here where I 'm standin' now, and I 
see her as she was goin' by this mornin'," said Isaac 
Brown, laughing, and settling himself comfortably 
against the fence as if they had chanced upon a wel- 
come subject of conversation. " I hailed her, same 's 
I gener'lly do. ' Where are you bound to-day, ma'am? ' 
says I. 

" ' I 'm goin' over as fur as Dipford Centre,' says 
she. ' I 'm goin' to see my poor dear 'Liza Jane. I 



190 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

want to 'suage her grief; her husband, Mr. 'Bijah 
Topliff, has passed away.' 

" ' So much the better,' says I. 

" ' No ; I never I'arnt about it till yisterday,' says 
she ; ' an' she looked up at me real kind of pleasant, 
and begun to laugh. 

" ' I hear he 's left property,' says she, tryin' to pull 
her face down solemn. I give her the fifty cents she 
wanted to borrow to make up her car-fare and other 
expenses, an' she stepped off like a girl down tow'ds 
the depot. 

" This afternoon, as you know, I 'd promised the 
boys that I 'd take 'em over to see the menagerie, and 
nothin' would n't do none of us any good but we must 
see the circus too ; an' when we 'd just got posted on 
one o' the best high seats, mother she nudged me, and 
I looked right down front two, three rows, an' if there 
wa'n't Mis' Price, spectacles an' all, with her head 
right up in the air, havin' the best time you ever see. 
I laughed right out. She had n't taken no time to see 
'Liza Jane ; she wa'n't 'suagin' no grief for nobody 
till she 'd seen the circus. ' There,' says I, ' I do like 
to have anybody keep their young feelin's ! ' " 

" Mis' Price come over to see our folks before 
breakfast," said John York. " Wife said she was 
inquirin' about the circus, but she wanted to know 
first if they couldn't oblige her with a few trink- 
ets o' mournin', seein' as how she 'd got to pay a 
mournin' visit. Wife thought 't was a bosom-pin, 
or somethin' like that, but turned out she wanted 
the skirt of a dress ; 'most anything would do, she 
said." 

" I thought she looked extra well startin' off," said 
Isaac, with an indulgent smile. " The Lord provides 



THE COON DOG 191 

very handsome for such, I do declare ! She ain't had 
no visible means o' support these ten or fifteen years 
back, but she don't freeze up in winter no more than 
we do." 

" Nor dry up in summer," interrupted his friend ; 
" I never did see such an able hand to talk." 

" She 's good company, and she 's obliging an' useful 
when the women folks have their extra work progress- 
in'," continued Isaac Brown kindly. " 'T ain't much 
for a well-off neighborhood like this to support that 
old chirpin' cricket. My mother used to say she kind 
of helped the work along by 'livenin' of it. Here she 
comes now ; must have taken the last train, after she 
had supper with 'Lizy Jane. You stay still ; we 're 
goin' to hear all about it." 

The small, thin figure of Mrs. Price had to be hailed 
twice before she could be stopped. 

" I wish you a good evenin', neighbors," she said. 
" I have been to the house of mournin'." 

" Find 'Liza Jane in, after the circus ? " asked Isaac 
Brown, with equal seriousness. " Excellent show, was 
n't it, for so late in the season ? " 

" Oh, beautiful ; it was beautiful, I declare," an- 
swered the pleased spectator readily. " Why, I did n't 
see you, nor Mis' Brown. Yes ; I felt it best to refresh 
my mind an' wear a cheerful countenance. When I 
see 'Liza Jane I was able to divert her mind consid'- 
able. She was glad I went. I told her I 'd made an 
effort, knowin' 't was so she had to lose the a'ternoon. 
'Bijah left property, if he did die away from home on 
a foreign shore." 

"You don't mean that 'Bijah Topliff's left any- 
thing ! " exclaimed John York with interest, while 
Isaac Brown put both hands deep into his pockets. 



192 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

and leaned back in a still more satisfactory position 
against the gatepost. 

" He enjoyed poor health," answered Mrs. Price, 
after a moment of deliberation, as if she must take 
time to think. " 'Bijah never was one that scattereth, 
nor yet increaseth. 'Liza Jane's got some memories o' 
the past that 's a good deal better than others ; but he 
died somewheres out in Connecticut, or so she heard, 
and he 's left a very val'able coon dog, — one he set a 
great deal by. 'Liza Jane said, last time he was to 
home, he priced that dog at fifty dollars. 'There, now, 
'Liza Jane,' says I, right to her, when she told me, 
' if I could git fifty dollars for that dog, I certain' 
would. Perhaps some o' the circus folks would like to 
buy him ; they 've taken in a stream o' money this day.* 
But 'Liza Jane ain't never inclined to listen to advice. 
'Tis a dreadful poor-spirited-lookin' creatur'. I don't 
want no right o' dower in him, myself." 

" A good coon dog 's worth somethin', certain," 
said John York handsomely. 

" If he is a good coon dog," added Isaac Brown. " I 
would n't have parted with old Rover, here, for a good 
deal of money when he was right in his best days ; but 
a dog like him 's like one of the family. Stop an' have 
some supper, won't ye, Mis' Price ? " — as the thin old 
creature was flitting off again. At that same moment 
this kind invitation was repeated from the door of the 
house; and Mrs. Price turned in, unprotesting and 
always sociably inclined, at the open gate. 

II 

It was a month later, and a whole autumn's length 
colder, when the two men were coming home from a 
long tramp through the woods. They had been mak- 



THE COON DOG 193 

ing a solemn inspection of a wood-lot that they owned 
together, and had now visited their landmarks and 
outer boundaries, and settled the great question of 
cutting or not cutting some large pines. When it was 
well decided that a few years' growth would be no dis- 
advantage to the timber, they had eaten an excellent 
cold luncheon and rested from their labors. 

" I don't feel a day older 'n ever I did when I get 
out in the woods this way," announced John York, 
who was a prim, dusty-looking little man, a prudent 
person, who had been selectman of the town at least 
a dozen times. 

" No more do I," agreed his companion, who was 
large and jovial and open-handed, more like a lucky 
sea-captain than a farmer. After pounding a slender 
walnut-tree with a heavy stone, he had succeeded in 
getting down a pocketful of late-hanging nuts which 
had escaped the squirrels, and was now snapping them 
back, one by one, to a venturesome chipmunk among 
some little frost-bitten beeches. Isaac Brown had a 
wonderfully pleasant way of getting on with all sorts 
of animals, even men. After a while they rose and 
went their way, these two companions, stopping here 
and there to look at a possible woodchuck's hole, or 
to strike a few hopeful blows at a hollow tree with the 
light axe which Isaac had carried to blaze new marks 
on some of the line-trees on the farther edge of their 
possessions. Sometimes they stopped to admire the 
size of an old hemlock, or to talk about thinning out 
the young pines. At last they were not very far from 
the entrance to the great tract of woodland. The yellow 
sunshine came slanting in much brighter against the 
tall trunks, spotting them with golden light high among 
the still branches. 



194 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

Presently tliey came to a great ledge, frost-split and 
cracked into mysterious crevices. 

" Here 's where we used to get all the coons," said 
John York. " I have n't seen a coon this great while, 
spite o' your courage knocking on the trees up back 
here. You know that night we got the four fat ones ? 
We started 'em somewheres near here, so the dog 
could get after 'em when they come out at night to go 
foragin'." 

" Hold on, John ; " and Mr. Isaac Brown got up 
from the log where he had just sat down to rest, and 
went to the ledge, and looked carefully all about. 
When he came back he was much excited, and beck- 
oned his friend away, speaking in a stage whisper. 

" I guess you '11 see a coon before you 're much 
older," he proclaimed. " I 've thought it looked lately 
as if there 'd been one about my place, and there 's 
plenty o' signs here, right in their old haunts. Couple 
o' hens' heads an' a lot o' feathers " — 

" Might be a fox," interrupted John York. 

"Might be a coon," answered Mr. Isaac Brown. 
" I 'm goin' to have him, too. I 've been lookin' at 
every old hollow tree I passed, but I never thought o' 
this place. We '11 come right off to-morrow night, I 
guess, John, an' see if we can't get him. 'T is an extra 
handy place for 'em to den ; in old times the folks al- 
ways called it a good place ; they 've been so sca'ce o' 
these late years that I 've thought little about 'em. 
Nothin' I ever liked so well as a coon-hunt. Gorry ! 
he must be a big old fellow, by his tracks ! See here, 
in this smooth dirt ; just like a baby's footmark." 

" Trouble is, we lack a good dog," said John York 
anxiously, after he had made an eager inspection. " I 
don't know where in the world to get one, either. 



THE COON DOG 195 

There ain't no such a dog about as your Rover, but 
you 've let him get spoilt ; these days I don't see him 
leave the yard. You ought to keep the women folks 
from overfeedin' of him so. He ought to 've lasted a 
good spell longer. He 's no use for huntin' now, that 's 
certain." 

Isaac accepted the rebuke meekly. John York was 
a calm man, but he now grew very fierce under such 
a provocation. Nobody likes to be hindered in a coon- 
hunt. 

" Oh, Rover 's too old, anyway," explained the affec- 
tionate master regretfully, " I 've been wishing all this 
afternoon I 'd brought him ; but I did n't think any- 
thing about him as we came away, I 've got so used to 
seeing him layin' about the yard. 'T would have been 
a real treat for old Rover, if he could have kept up. 
Used to be at my heels the whole time. He could n't 
follow us, anyway, up here." 

"I shouldn't wonder if he could," insisted John, 
with a humorous glance at his old friend, who was 
much too heavy and huge of girth for quick transit 
over rough ground. John York himself had grown 
lighter as he had grown older. 

" I '11 tell you one thing we could do," he hastened 
to suggest. " There 's that dog of 'Bijah Topliff 's. 
Don't you know the old lady told us, that day she 
went over to Dipford, how high he was valued ? Most 
o' 'Bijah's important business was done in the fall, 
goin' out by night, gunning with fellows from the 
mills. He was just the kind of a worthless do-nothing 
that 's sure to have an extra knowin' smart dog. I ex- 
pect 'Liza Jane 's got him now. Perhaps we could 
get him by to-morrow night. Let one o' my boys go 
over I " 



196 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

" Why, 'Liza Jane 's come, bag an' baggage, to spend 
the winter with her mother," exclaimed Isaac Brown, 
springing to his feet like a boy. " I 've had it in mind 
to tell you two or three times this afternoon, and then 
something else has flown it out of my head. I let my 
John Henry take the long-tailed wagon an' go down 
to the depot this mornin' to fetch her an' her goods 
up. The old lady come in early, while we were to 
breakfast, and to hear her lof tj'^ talk you 'd thought 't 
would taken a couple o' four-horse teams to move her. 
I told John Henry he might take that wagon and fetch 
up what light stuff he could, and see how much else 
there was, an' then I 'd make further arrangements. 
She said 'Liza Jane 'd see me well satisfied, an' rode 
off, pleased to death. I see 'em returnin' about eight, 
after the train was in. They 'd got 'Liza Jane with 
'em, smaller 'n ever ; and there was a trunk tied up 
with a rope, and a small roll o' beddin' and braided 
mats, and a quilted rockin'-chair. The old lady was 
holdin' on tight to a bird-cage with nothin' in it. Yes ; 
an' I see the dog, too, in behind. He appeared kind of 
timid. He 's a yaller dog, but he ain't stump-tailed. 
They hauled up out front o' the house, and mother 
an' I went right out ; Mis' Price always expects to 
have notice taken. She was in great sperits. Said 
'Liza Jane concluded to sell off most of her stuff 
rather 'n have the care of it. She 'd told the folks that 
Mis' Toj)liff had a beautiful sofa and a lot o' nice 
chairs, and two framed pictures that would fix up the 
house complete, and invited us all to come over and 
see 'em. There, she seemed just as pleased returnin' 
with the bird-cage. Disappointments don't appear to 
trouble her no more than a butterfly. I kind of like 
the old creatur'; I don't mean to see her want." 



THE COON DOG 197 

" They '11 let us have the dog," said John York. 
" I don't know but I '11 give a quarter for him, and 
we'll let 'em have a good piece o' the coon." 

"You really comin' 'way up here by night, coon- 
huntin' ? " asked Isaac Brown, looking reproachfully 
at his more agile comrade. 

" I be," answered John York. 

" I was dre'tful afraid you was only talking, and 
might back out," returned the cheerful heavy-weight, 
with a chuckle. " Now we 've got things all fixed, I 
feel more like it than ever. I tell you there 's just boy 
enough left inside of me. I '11 clean up my old gun 
to-morrow mornin', and you look right after your'n. 
I dare say the boys have took good care of 'em for us, 
but they don't know what we do about huntin', and 
we '11 bring 'em all along and show 'em a little fun." 

" All right," said John York, as soberly as if they 
were going to look after a piece of business for the 
town ; and they gathered up the axe and other light 
possessions, and started toward home. 

Ill 

The two friends, whether by accident or design, 
came out of the woods some distance from their own 
houses, but very near to the low-storied little gray 
dwelling of Mrs. Price. They crossed the pasture, and 
climbed over the toppling fence at the foot of her 
small sandy piece of land, and knocked at the door. 
There was a light already in the kitchen. Mrs. Price 
and Eliza Jane Topliff appeared at once, eagerly hos- 
pitable. ' 

" Anybody sick ? " asked Mrs. Price, with instant 
sympathy. " Nothin' happened, I hope ? " 

" Oh, no," said both the men. 



198 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

" We came to talk about hiring your dog to-mor- 
row night," explained Isaac Brown, feeling for the 
moment amused at his eager errand. " We got on 
track of a coon just now, up in the woods, and we 
thought we 'd give our boys a little treat. You shall 
have fifty cents, an' welcome, and a good piece o' the 
coon." 

" Yes, Square Brown ; we can let you have the dog 
as well as not," interrupted Mrs. Price, delighted to 
grant a favor. " Poor departed 'Bijah, he set every- 
thing by him as a coon dog. He always said a dog's 
capital was all in his reputation." 

" You '11 have to be dreadful careful an' not lose 
him," urged Mrs. Topliff. " Yes, sir ; he 's a proper 
coon dog as ever walked the earth, but he 's terrible 
weak-minded about followin' 'most anybody. 'Bijah 
used to travel off twelve or fourteen miles after him 
to git him back, when he wa'n't able. Somebody 'd 
speak to him decent, or fling a whip-lash as they 
drove by, an' off he 'd canter on three legs right after 
the wagon. But 'Bijah said he would n't trade him 
for no coon dog he ever was acquainted with. Trouble 
is, coons is awful sca'ce." 

" I guess he ain't out o' practice," said John York 
amiably ; " I guess he '11 know when he strikes the 
coon. Come, Isaac, we must be gittin' along tow'ds 
home. I feel like eatin' a good supper. You tie him 
up to-morrow afternoon, so we shall be sure to have 
him," he turned to say to Mrs. Price, who stood smil- 
ing at the door. 

" Land sakes, dear, he won't git away ; you '11 find 
him right there betwixt the wood-box and the stove, 
where he is now. Hold the light, 'Liza Jane ; they 
can't see their way out to the road. I '11 fetch him over 



THE COON DOG 199 

to ye in good season," she called out, by way of fare- 
well ; " 't win save ye third of a mile extra walk. No, 
'Liza Jane ; you '11 let me do it, if you please. I 've 
got a mother's heart. The gentlemen will excuse us 
for showin' feelin'. You 're all the child I 've got, an' 
your prosperity is the same as mine." 

IV 

The great night of the coon-hunt was frosty and 
still, with only a dim light from the new moon. John 
York and his boys, and Isaac Brown, whose excite- 
ment was very great, set forth across the fields toward 
the dark woods. The men seemed younger and gayer 
than the boys. There was a burst of laughter when 
John Henry Brown and his little brother appeared 
with the coon dog of the late Mr. Abijah Topliff, 
which had promptly run away home again after Mrs. 
Price had coaxed him over in the afternoon. The 
captors had tied a string round his neck, at which 
they pulled vigorously from time to time to urge him 
forward. Perhaps he found the night too cold ; at 
any rate, he stopped short in the frozen furrows every 
few minutes, lifting one foot and whining a little. 
Half a dozen times he came near to tripping up Mr. 
Isaac Brown and making him fall at full length. 

"Poor Tiger! poor Tiger!" said the good-natured 
sportsman, when somebody said that the dog did n't 
act as if he were much used to being out by night. 
" He '11 be all right when he once gets track of the 
coon." But when they were fairly in the woods, Tiger's 
distress was perfectly genuine. The long rays of light 
from the old-fashioned lanterns of pierced tin went 
wheeling round and round, making a tall ghost of 
every tree, and strange shadows went darting in and 



200 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

out behind the pines. The woods were like an inter- 
minable pillared room where the darkness made a high 
ceiling. The clean frosty smell of the open fields was 
changed for a warmer air, damp with the heavy odor 
of moss and fallen leaves. There was something wild 
and delicious in the forest in that hour of night. The 
men and boys tramped on silently in single file, as if 
they followed the flickering light instead of carrying 
it. The dog fell back by instinct, as did his compan- 
ions, into the easy familiarity of forest life. He ran 
beside them, and watched eagerly as they chose a safe 
place to leave a coat or two and a basket. He seemed 
to be an affectionate dog, now that he had made ac- 
quaintance with his masters. 

" Seems to me he don't exactly know what he 's 
about," said one of the York boys scornfully ; " we 
must have struck that coon's track somewhere, com- 
in' in." 

" We 'U get through talkin', an' heap up a little 
somethin' for a fire, if you '11 turn to and help," said 
his father. " I 've always noticed that nobody can 
give so much good advice about a piece o' work as 
a new hand. When you 've treed as many coons as 
your Uncle Brown an' me, you won't feel so certain. 
Isaac, you be the one to take the dog up round the 
ledge, there. He '11 scent the coon quick enough 
then. We '11 tend to this part o' the business." 

" You may come too, John Henry," said the indul- 
gent father, and they set off together silently with the 
coon dog. He followed well enough now ; his tail and 
ears were drooping even more than usual, but he whim- 
pered along as bravely as he could, much excited, at 
John Henry's heels, like one of those great soldiers 
who are all unnerved until the battle is well begun. 



THE COON DOG 201 

A minute later the father and son came hurrying 
back, breathless, and stumbling over roots and bushes. 
The fire was already lighted, and sending a great glow 
higher and higher among the trees. 

" He 's off ! He 's struck a track ! He was off like 
a major ! " wheezed Mr. Isaac Brown. 

" Which way 'd he go ? " asked everybody. 

" Eig^ht out toward the fields. Like 's not the old 
fellow was just starting after more of our fowls. I 'm 
glad we come early, — he can't have got far yet. We 
can't do nothin' but wait now, boys. I '11 set right 
down here." 

" Soon as the coon trees, you '11 hear the dog sing, 
now I tell you ! " said John York, with great enthu- 
siasm. " That night your father an' me got those four 
busters we 've told you about, they come right back 
here to the ledge. I don't know but they will now. 
'T was a dreadful cold night, I know. We did n't get 
home till past three o'clock in the mornin', either. 
You remember, don't you, Isaac? " 

"I do," said Isaac. "How old Rover worked that 
night ! Could n't see out of his eyes, nor hardly wag 
his clever old tail, for two days ; thorns in both his 
fore paws, and the last coon took a piece right out of 
his off shoulder." 

" Why did n't you let Rover come to-night, father ? " 
asked the younger boy. " I think he knew somethin' 
was up. He was jumpin' round at a great rate when I 
come out of the yard." 

" I did n't know but he might make trouble for the 
other dog," answered Isaac, after a moment's silence. 
He felt almost disloyal to the faithful creature, and 
had been missing him all the way. " Sh ! there 's a 
bark ! " And they all stopped to listen. 



202 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

The fire was leaping higher ; they all sat near it, 
listening and talking by turns. There is apt to be a 
good deal of waiting in a coon-hunt. 

" If Rover was young as he used to be, I 'd resk him 
to tree any coon that ever run," said the regretful 
master. " This smart creature o' Topliff's can't beat 
him, I know. The poor old fellow's eyesight seems to 
be going. Two — three times he 's run out at me right 
in broad day, an' barked when I come up the yard to- 
ward the house, and I did pity him dreadfully ; he 
was so 'shamed when he found out what he 'd done. 
Rover 's a dog that 's got an awful lot o' pride. He 
. went right off out behind the long barn the last time, 
and would n't come in for nobody when they called 
him to supper till I went out myself and made it up 
with him. No; he can't see very well now, Rover 
can't." 

" He 's heavy, too ; he 's got too unwieldy to tackle 
a smart coon, I expect, even if he could do the tall 
runnin'," said John York, with sympathy. " They 
have to get a master grip with their teeth through a 
coon's thick pelt this time o' year. No ; the young 
folks get all the good chances after a while ; " and he 
looked round indulgently at the chubby faces of his 
boys, who fed the fire, and rejoiced in being promoted 
to the society of their elders on equal terms. " Ain't 
it time we heard from the dog ? " And they all listened, 
while the fire snapped and the sap whistled in some 
green sticks. 

"I hear him," said John Henry suddenly; and 
faint and far away there came the sound of a 
desperate bark. There is a bark that means attack, 
and there is a bark that means only foolish excite- 
ment. 



THE COON DOG 203 

" They ain't far off ! " said Isaac. " My gracious, 
he 's right after him ! I don't know 's I expected that 
poor-looking dog to be so smart. You can't tell by 
their looks. Quick as he scented the game up here in 
the rocks, off he put. Perhaps it ain't any matter if 
they ain't stump-tailed, long 's they 're yaller dogs. 
He did n't look heavy enough to me. I tell you, he 
means business. Hear that bark ! " 

" They all bark alike after a coon." John York was 
as excited as anybody. " Git the guns laid out to hand, 
boys ; I told you we 'd ought to follow ! " he com- 
manded. " If it 's the old fellow that belongs here, he 
may put in any minute." But there was again a long 
silence and state of suspense ; the chase had turned 
another way. There were faint distant yaps. The fire 
burned low and fell together with a shower of sparks. 
The smaller boys began to grow chilly and sleepy, 
when there was a thud and rustle and snapping of 
twigs close at hand, then the gasp of a breathless dog. 
Two dim shapes rushed by ; a shower of bark fell, and 
a dog began to sing at the foot of the great twisted 
pine not fifty feet away. 

" Hooray for Tiger ! " yelled the boys ; but the dog's 
voice filled all the woods. It might have echoed to the 
mountain-tops. There was the old coon ; they could 
all see him half-way up the tree, flat to the great 
limb. They heaped the fire with dry branches till it 
flared high. Now they lost him in a shadow as he 
twisted about the tree. John York fired, and Isaac 
Brown fired, and the boys took a turn at the guns, 
while John Henry started to climb a neighboring 
oak; but at last it was Isaac who brought the coon to 
ground with a lucky shot, and the dog stopped his 
deafening bark and frantic leaping in the underbrush, 



204 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

and after an astonishing moment of silence crept out, 
a proud victor, to liis prouder master's feet. 

" Goodness alive, who 's this ? Good for you, old 
handsome ! Why, I '11 be hanged if it ain't old Rover, 
boys ; it 's old Rover I " But Isaac could not speak 
another word. They all crowded round the wistful, 
clumsy old dog, whose eyes shone bright, though his 
breath was all gone. Each man patted him, and praised 
him and said they ought to have mistrusted all the time 
that it could be nobody but he. It was some minutes 
before Isaac Brown could trust himself to do any- 
thing but pat the sleek old head that was always 
ready to his hand. 

" He must have overheard us talkin' ; I guess he 'd 
have come if he 'd dropped dead half-way," proclaimed 
John Henry, like a prince of the reigning house ; and 
Rover wagged his tail as if in honest assent, as he 
lay at his master's side. They sat together, while the 
fire was brightened again to make a good light for the 
coon-hunt supper; and Rover had a good half of 
everything that found its way into his master's hand. 
It was toward midnight when the triumphal pro- 
cession set forth toward home, with the two lanterns, 
across the fields. 

V 

The next morning was bright and warm after the 
hard frost of the night before. Old Rover was asleep 
on the doorstep in the sun, and his master stood in 
the yard, and saw neighbor Price come along the road 
in her best array, with a gay holiday air. 

" Well, now," she said eagerly, " you wa'n't out very 
late last night, was you ? I got up myself to let Tiger 
in. He come home, all beat out, about a quarter past 
nine. I expect you had n't no kind o' trouble gittin' 



THE COON DOG 205 

the coon. The boys was tellin' me he weighed 'most 
thirty pounds." 

" Oh, no kind o' trouble," said Isaac, keeping the 
great secret gallantly. " You got the things I sent over 
this mornin' ? " 

" Bless your heart, yes ! I 'd a sight rather have all 
that good pork an' potatoes than any o' your wild 
meat," said Mrs. Price, smiling with prosperity. "You 
see, now, 'Liza Jane she 's given in. She did n't re'Uy 
know but 't was all talk of 'Bijah 'bout that dog 's 
bein' wuth fifty dollars. She says she can't cope with 
a huntin' dog same 's he could, an' she 's given me the 
money you an' John York sent over this mornin'; an' 
I did n't know but what you 'd lend me another half 
a dollar, so I could both go to Dipford Centre an' re- 
turn, an' see if I could n't make a sale o' Tiger right 
over there where they all know about him. It 's right 
in the coon season ; now's my time, ain't it?" 

" Well, gettin' a little late," said Isaac, shaking 
with laughter as he took the desired sum of money out 
of his pocket. " He seems to be a clever dog round 
the house." 

" I don't know 's I want to harbor him all winter," 
answered the excursionist frankly, striking into a good 
traveling gait as she started off toward the railroad 
station. 

NOTES 

Dipford: — The New England town in which the scenes of 
some of Miss Jewett's stories are laid. 

master hot : — In the New England dialect, master is used in 
the sense of very or extremely. 

bosom-pin: — Mourning pins of jet or black enamel were 
much worn in times past. 

'suage: — Assuage, meaning to soften or decrease. 



206 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

selectman: — One of a board chosen in New England towns 
to transact the business of the community. 

scattereth nor yet increaseth: — See Proverbs, 11: 24. 

right o' dower: — The right to claim a part of a deceased 
husband's property. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

The action takes place in a country district in New England. 
Judging by the remarks about the fans, what kind of person do 
you suppose Old Lady Price to be ? Is there any particular 
meaning in the word to-day f How is 'Liza Jane related to Mrs. 
Price? What was the character of Mr. 'Bijah Topliff? Does 
the old lady feel grieved at his death? What does Isaac mean 
by such, in the last line, page 190 ? How does the old lady 
live? What is shown of her character when she is called "a 
chirpin' old cricket " ? Does she feel ashamed of having gone to 
the circus ? How does she explain her going ? What can you tell 
of 'Bijah from what is said of 'Liza's " memories " ? Would the 
circus people have cared to buy the dog ? Notice how the author 
makes you feel the pleasantness of the walk in the woods. Dt 
you know where coons have their dens ? How does Isaac show 
his affection for old Rover ? Is it true that " worthless do-noth- 
ings " usually have " smart " dogs ? Why does the author stop 
to tell all about 'Liza Jane's arrival ? What light is thrown on 
the old lady's character by Isaac's words beginning, " Disap- 
pointments don't appear to trouble her " ? Are the men very 
anxious to " give the boys a treat" ? Why does the old lady call 
Mr. York " dear " ? What is meant by the last five lines of Part 
III ? What sort of dog is Tiger ? What is meant by " soon as 
the coon trees " ? How does the avithor tell you of old Rover's 
defects ? What person would you like to have shoot the coon at 
last ? Why could Isaac Brown not " trust himself to speak" ? 
Do you think old Rover "overheard them talking," as John 
Henry suggests ? How does the author let you into the secret of 
Tiger's behavior ? Why does Isaac not tell the old lady which 
dog treed the coon ? What does he mean by saying that Tiger is 
" a clever dog round the house " ? Do you think that Mrs. Price 
succeeded in getting fifty dollars for the dog ? W^hy does the 
author not tell whether she does or not ? Try to put into your 
own words a summing up of the old lady's character. Tell what 



THE COON DOG 207 

you think of the two old men. Do yon like the use of dialect in 
this story ? Would it have been better if the people had all 
spoken good English ? Why, or why not ? 

THEME SUBJECTS 

Hunting for Squirrels A Group of Odd Characters 

An Intelligent Dog Raccoons 

A Night in the Woods Opossums 

An Old Man The Tree-dwellers 

Tracking Rabbits Around the Fire 

Borrowers How to Make a Camp Fire 

The Circus The Picnic Lunch 

Old Lady Price An Interesting Old Lady 

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING 

Try to write a theme in which uneducated people talk as they 
do in real life ; as far as possible, fit every person's speech to 
his character. Below are given some suggestions for this work: 

Mrs. Wicks borrows Mrs. Hall's flat-irons. 

Two or three country children quarrel over a hen's nest. 

The family get ready to go to the Sunday School picnic. 

Sammie tells his parents that he has been whipped at school. 

Two old men talk about the crops. 

One of the pigs gets out of the pen. 

Two boys go hunting. 

The farmer has just come back from town. 

Mrs. Robbins describes the moving-picture show. 

An Intelligent Dog: — Tell who owns the dog, and how 
much you have had opportunity to observe him. Describe him 
as vividly as possible. Give some incidents that show his intelli- 
gence. 

Perhaps you can make a story out of this, giving the largest 
amount of space to an event in which the dog accomplished 
some notable thing, as protecting property, bringing help in time 
of danger, or saving his master's life. In this case, try to tell 
some of the story by means of conversation, as Miss Jewett does. 

An Interesting Old Lady: — Tell where you saw the old 
lady; or, if you know her well, explain the nature of your ae- 



208 SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

quaintance with her. Describe her rather fully, telling how she 
looks and what she wears. How does she walk and talk ? What 
is her chief occupation ? If possible, quote some of her remarks 
in her own words. Tell some incidents in which she figures. Try 
to bring out her most interesting qualities, so that the reader 
can see them for himself. 



COLLATERAL READINGS 

Dogs and Men H. C. Merwin 

Stickeen : The Story of my Dog . . John Muir 
Another Dog (in A Gentleman Vaga- 
bond) F. H. Smith 

The Sporting Dog . Joseph A. Graham 

Dogtown Mabel Osgood Wright 

Bob, Son of Battle Alfred Ollivant 

A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs . . . Laurence Hutton 
A Boy I Knew and Some More 



A Dog of Flanders Louise de la Ramde 

The Call of the Wild Jack London 

White Fang . " " 

My Dogs in the Northland . . . . E. R. Young 

Dogs of all Nations C. J. Miller 

Leo (poem) R. W. Gilder 

Greyf liar's Bobby Eleanor Atkinson 

The Biography of a Silver Fox . . E. S. Thompson 

Our Friend the Dog (trans.) . . . Maurice Maeterlinck 

Following the Deer W. J. Long 

The Trail of the Sand-hill Stag . . Ernest Thompson Seton 

Lives of the Hunted " " " 

The Wilderness Hunter Theodore Roosevelt 

A Watcher in the Woods .... Dallas Lore Sharp 

Wild Life near Home " " " 

The Watchers of the Trails . . . C. G. D. Roberts 

Kindred of the Wild 

Little People of the Sycamore ... " . " 

The Haunters of the Silences ... " " 

Squirrels and other Fur-bearers . . John Burroughs 

My Woodland Intimates E. Bignell 



THE COON DOG 209 

Stories of old people: — 

Aged Folk (iu Letters from my 

Mill) Alphonse Daudet 

Green Island (chapter 8 of The 

Country of the Pointed Firs) . Sarah Orne Jewett 

Aunt Cynthy Dallett « " 

The Failure of David Berry , . " " " 

A Church Mouse Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman 

A White Heron and Other Stories Sarah Orne Jewett 

Tales of New England .... " « " 

The Country of the Pointed Firs . " " " 

A Country Doctor ...... " " " 

Deephaven , " " " 

The Queen's Twin and Other 

Stories « « « 

The King of Folly Island and 

Other People " " *< 

A Marsh Island " " " 

The Tory Lover " « « 

A Native of Winby and Other 

Tales " « « 

Betty Leicester's Christmas . . " " " 

Betty Leicester " « " 

Country By-ways " " " 

Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett . . Mrs. James T. Fields (Ed.) 

For Biographies and criticisms of Miss Jewett, see : Atlantic 
Monthly, 94 : 485; Critic, 39: 292, October, 1901 (Portrait) ; New 
England Magazine, 22 : 737, August, 1900 ; Outlook, 69 : 423; 
Bookman, 34 : 221 (Portrait). 



ON THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM 
LINCOLN 

RICHARD WATSON GILDER 

This bronze doth keep the very form and mold 
Of our great martyr's face. Yes, this is he : 
That brow aU wisdom, all benignity ; 
That human, humorous mouth ; those cheeks that 
hold 

Like some harsh landscape all the summer's gold ; 
That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea 
For storms to beat on ; the lone agony 
Those silent, patient lips too well foretold. 

Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men 
As might some prophet of the elder day — 
Brooding above the tempest and the fray 

With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal ken. 
A power was his beyond the touch of art 
Or armdd strength — his pure and mighty heart. 

NOTES 

the life-mask : — The life-mask of Abraham Lincoln was 
made by Leonard W. Volk, in Chicago, in April, 1860. A good 
picture of it is given as the frontispiece to Volume 4 of Nicolay 
and Hay's Abraham Lincoln, A History. 

this bronze : — A life-mask is made of plaster first ; then 
usually it is cast in bronze. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

This is not difficult to understand. Read it over slowly, trying 
first to get the meaning of each sentence as if it were prose. 



ON THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 211 

You may have to read it several times before you see the exact 
meaning of each part. When you have mastered it, read it 
through consecutively, thinking of what it tells about Lincoln. 

This poem is, as you may know, a sonnet. Notice the number 
of lines, the meter, and the rhyme-scheme, referring to page 
139 for a review of the sonnet form. Notice how the thought 
changes at the ninth line. Find a sonnet in one of the good 
current magazines. How can you recognize it ? Read it care- 
fully. If it is appropriate, bring it to class, and read and explain 
it to your classmates. Why has the sonnet form been used so 
much by poets ? 

If you can find it, read the sonnet on The Sonnet^ by Richard 
Watson Gilder. 

COLLATERAL READINGS 

For references on Lincoln, see pages 50 and 51. 

For portraits of Richard Watson Gilder, and biographical 
material, consult : Current Literature, 41 : 319 (Portrait) ; Re- 
view of Reviews, 34 : 491 (Portrait) ; Nation, 89 : 619 ; Dial, 
47 : 441 ; Harper's Weekly, 53 : 6 ; World's Work, 17 : 11293 
(Portrait) ; Craftsman, 16 : 130, May, 1909 (Portrait) ; Out- 
look, 93 : 689 (Portrait). 

For references to material on the sonnet, see page 140. 



A FIRE AMONG THE GIANTS 

JOHN MUIR 

(From Our National Parks) 

In the forest between tbe Middle and East forks of 
the Kaweah, I met a great fire, and as fire is the 
master scourge and controller of the distribution of 
trees, I stopped to watch it and learn what I could 
of its works and ways with the giants. It came racing 
up the steep chaparral-covered slopes of the East Fork 
canon with passionate enthusiasm in a broad cataract 
of flames, now bending down low to feed on the green 
bushes, devouring acres of them at a breath, now 
towering high in the air as if looking abroad to choose 
a way, then stooping to feed again, — the lurid flap- 
ping surges and the smoke and terrible rushing and 
roaring hiding all that is gentle and orderly in the 
work. But as soon as the deep forest was reached, 
the ungovernable flood became calm like a torrent 
entering a lake, creeping and spreading beneath the 
trees where the ground was level or sloped gently, 
slowly nibbling the cake of compressed needles and 
scales with flames an inch high, rising here and there 
to a foot or two on dry twigs and clumps of small 
bushes and brome grass. Only at considerable intervals 
were fierce bonfires lighted, where heavy branches 
broken off by snow had accumulated, or around some 
venerable giant whose head had been stricken off by 
lightning. 

I tethered Brownie on the edge of a little meadow 
beside a stream a good safe way off, and then cau- 



A FIRE AMONG THE GIANTS 213 

tiously chose a camp for myself in a big stout hollow 
trunk not likely to be crushed by the fall of burning 
trees, and made a bed of ferns and boughs in it. The 
night, however, and the strange wild fireworks were 
too beautiful and exciting to allow much sleep. There 
was no danger of being chased and hemmed in ; for in 
the main forest belt of the Sierra, even when swift 
winds are blowing, fires seldom or never sweep over 
the trees in broad all-embracing sheets as they do 
in the dense Rocky Mountain woods and in those of 
the Cascade Mountains of Oregon and Washington. 
Here they creep from tree to tree with tranquil delib- 
eration, allowing close observation, though caution 
is required in venturing around the burning giants to 
avoid falling limbs and knots and fragments from 
dead shattered tops. Though the day was best for 
study, I sauntered about night after night, learning 
what I could, and admiring the wonderful show viv- 
idly displayed in the lonely darkness, the ground-fire 
advancing in long crooked lines gently grazing and 
smoking on the close-pressed leaves, springing up in 
thousands of little jets of pure flame on dry tassels 
and twigs, and tall spires and flat sheets with jagged 
flapping edges dancing here and there on grass tufts 
and bushes, big bonfires blazing in perfect storms of 
energy where heavy branches mixed with small ones 
lay smashed together in hundred cord piles, big red 
arches between spreading root- swells and trees grow- 
ing close together, huge fire-mantled trunks on the 
hill slopes glowing like bars of hot iron, violet-colored 
fire running up the tall trees, tracing the furrows of 
the bark in quick quivering rills, and lighting magni- 
ficent torches on dry shattered tops, and ever and 
anon, with a tremendous roar and burst of light, 



214 JOHN MUIR 

young trees clad in low-descending feathery branches 
vanishing in one flame two or three hundred feet 
high. 

One of the most impressive and beautiful sights 
was made by the great fallen trunks lying on the hill- 
sides all red and glowing like colossal iron bars fresh 
from a furnace, two hundred feet long some of them, 
and ten to twenty feet thick. After repeated burnings 
have consumed the bark and sapwood, the sound 
charred surface, being full of cracks and sprinkled 
with leaves, is quickly overspread with a pure, rich, 
furred, ruby glow almost flameless and smokeless, 
producing a marvelous effect in the night. Another 
grand and interesting sight are the fires on the tops 
of the largest living trees flaming above the green 
branches at a height of perhaps two hundred feet, 
entirely cut off from the ground-fires, and looking like 
signal beacons on watch towers. From one standpoint 
I sometimes saw a dozen or more, those in the dis- 
tance looking like great stars above the forest roof. 
At first I could not imagine how these Sequoia lamps 
were lighted, but the very first night, strolling about 
waiting and watching, I saw the thing done again and 
again. The thick fibrous bark of old trees is divided 
by deep, nearly continuous furrows, the sides of which 
are bearded with the bristling ends of fibres broken 
by the growth swelling of the trunk, and when the 
fire comes creeping around the feet of the trees, it 
runs up these bristly furrows in lovely pale blue 
quivering, bickering rills of flame with a low, earnest 
whispering sound to the lightning-shattered top of 
the trunk, which, in the dry Indian summer, with 
perhaps leaves and twigs and squirrel-gnawed cone- 
scales and seed-wings lodged in it, is readily ignited. 



A FIRE AMONG THE GIANTS 215 

These lamp-lighting rills, the most beautiful fire- 
streams I ever saw, last only a minute or two, but the 
big lamps burn with varying brightness for days and 
weeks, throwing off sparks like the spray of a foun- 
tain, while ever and anon a shower of red coals comes 
sifting down through the branches, followed at times 
with startling effect by a big burned-off chunk weigh- 
ing perhaps half a ton. 

The immense bonfires where fifty or a hundred 
cords of peeled, split, smashed wood has been piled 
around some old giant by a single stroke of lightning 
is another grand sight in the night. The light is so 
great I found I could read common print three hun- 
dred yards from them, and the illumination of the 
circle of onlooking trees is indescribably impressive. 
Other big fires, roaring and booming like waterfalls, 
were blazing on the upper sides of trees on hillslopes, 
against which limbs broken off by heavy snow had 
rolled, while branches high overhead, tossed and 
shaken by the ascending air current, seemed to be 
writhing in pain. Perhaps the most startling phe- 
nomenon of all was the quick death of childlike Se- 
quoias only a century or two of age. In the midst of 
the other comparatively slow and steady fire work one 
of these tall, beautiful saplings, leafy and branchy, 
would be seen blazing up suddenly, all in one heaving, 
booming, passionate flame reaching from the ground 
to the top of the tree, and fifty to a hundred feet or 
more above it, with a smoke column bending forward 
and streaming away on the upper, free-flowing wind. 
To burn these green trees a strong fire of dry wood 
beneath them is required, to send up a current of air 
hot enough to distill inflammable gases from the 
leaves and sprays ; then instead of the lower limbs 



216 JOHN MUIR 

gradually catching fire and igniting the next and the 
next in succession, the whole tree seems to explode 
almost simultaneously, and with awful roaring and 
throbbing a round, tapering flame shoots up two or 
three hundred feet, and in a second or two is quenched, 
leaving the green spire a black, dead mast, bristled 
and roughened with down-curling boughs. Nearly all 
the trees that have been burned down are lying with 
their heads up hill, because they are burned far more 
deeply on the upper side, on account of broken limbs 
rolling down against them to make hot fires, while 
only leaves and twigs accumulate on the lower side 
and are quickly consumed without injury to the tree. 
But green, resinless Sequoia wood burns very slowly, 
and many successive fires are required to burn down 
a large tree. Fires can run only at intervals of sev- 
eral years, and when the ordinary amount of fire-wood 
that has rolled against the gigantic trunk is con- 
sumed, only a shallow scar is made, which is slowly 
deepened by recurring fires until far beyond the cen- 
tre of gravity, and when at last the tree falls, it of 
course falls up hill. The healing folds of wood layers 
on some of the deeply burned trees show that cen- 
turies have elapsed since the last wounds were made. 
When a great Sequoia falls, its head is smashed 
into fragments about as small as those made by light- 
ning, which are mostly devoured by the first running, 
hunting fire that finds them, while the trunk is slowly 
wasted away by centuries of fire and weather. One of 
the most interesting fire-actions on the trunk is the 
boring of those great tunnel-like hollows through which 
horsemen may gallop. All of these famous hollows are 
burned out of the solid wood, for no Sequoia is ever 
hollowed by decay. When the tree falls, the brash 



A FIRE AMONG THE GIANTS 217 

trunk is often broken straight across into sections as if 
sawed ; into these joints the fire creeps, and, on ac- 
count of the great size of the broken ends, burns for 
weeks or even months without being much influenced by 
the weather. After the great glowing ends fronting each 
other have burned so far apart that their rims cease 
to burn, the fire continues to work on in the centres, 
and the ends become deeply concave. Then heat being 
radiated from side to side, the burning goes on in each 
section of the trunk independent of the other, until 
the diameter of the bore is so great that the heat radi- 
ated across from side to side is not sufficient to keep 
them burning. It appears, therefore, that only very 
large trees can receive the fire-auger and have any 
shell-rim left. 

Fire attacks the large trees only at the ground, con- 
suming the fallen leaves and humus at their feet, 
doing them but little harm unless considerable quanti- 
ties of fallen limbs happen to be piled about them, 
their thick mail of spongy, un pitchy, almost unburn- 
able bark affording strong protection. Therefore the 
oldest and most perfect unscarred trees are found on 
ground that is nearly level, while those growing on 
hillsides, against which fallen branches roll, are always 
deeply scarred on the upper side, and as we have seen 
are sometimes burned down. The saddest thing of 
all was to see the hopeful seedlings, many of them 
crinkled and bent with the pressure of winter snow, 
yet bravely aspiring at the top, helplessly perishing, 
and young trees, perfect spires of verdure and natu- 
rally immortal, suddenly changed to dead masts. Yet 
the sun looked cheerily down the openings in the for- 
est roof, turning the black smoke to a beautiful 
brown as if all was for the best. 



218 JOHN MUm 

NOTES 

Kaweah: — A river in California, which runs through the 
Sequoia National Park. 

Brovtrnie : — A small donkey which Mr. Muir had brought 
along to carry his pack of blankets and provisions. (See pp. 285, 
286 of Our National Parks.) 

humus: — Vegetable mold. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

In 1875, Mr, Muir spent some weeks in the Sequoia forests, 
learning what he could of the life and death of the giant trees. 
This selection is from his account of his experiences. How does 
the author make you feel the fierceness of the fire ? Why does 
it become calmer when it enters the forest ? Would most people 
care to linger in a burning forest ? What is shown by Mr. Muir's 
willingness to stay ? Note the vividness of the passage begin- 
ning " Though the day was best " : How does the author man- 
age to make it so clear ? Might this passage be differently punc- 
tuated, with advantage ? What is the value of the figure " like 
colossal iron bars " ? Note the vivid words in the passage be- 
ginning "The thick " and ending with "half a ton." What do 
you think of the expressions onlooking trees, and childlike Sequoias ? 
Explain why the burned trees fall up hill. Go through the selec- 
tion and pick out the words that show action ; color ; sound. 
Try to state clearly the reasons why this selection is clear and 
picturesque. 

THEME SUBJECTS 

The Forest Fire A Tree Struck by Lightning 

A Group of Large Trees A Famous Student of Nature 

Felling a Tree Planting Trees 

A Fire in the Country The Duties of a Forest Ranger 

A Fire in the City The Lumber Camp 

Alone in the Woods A Fire at Night 

The Woodsman Learning to Observe 

In the Woods The Conservation of the Forests 

Camping Out for the Night The Pine 

By-products of the Forest Ravages of the Paper Mill 



A FIRE AMONG THE GIANTS 219 

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING 

A Fire at Night : — If possible, found this theme on actual 
observation and experience. Tell of your first knowledge of the 
fire — the smoke and the flame, or the ringing of bells and the 
shouting. From what point of view did you see the fire ? Tell 
how it looked when you first saw it. Use words of color and 
action, as Mr. Muir does. Perhaps you can make your descrip- 
tion vivid by means of sound-words. Tell what people did and 
what they said. Did you hear anything said by the owners of 
the property that was burning ? Go on and trace the progress 
of the fire, describing its change in volume and color. Try at all 
times to make your reader see the beauty and fierceness and 
destructiveness of the fire. You might close your theme with the 
putting out of the fire, or perhaps you will prefer to speak of 
the appearance of the ruins by daylight. When you have finished 
your theme, read it over, and see where you can touch it up to 
make it clearer and more impressive. Read again some of the 
most brilliant passages in Mr. Muir's description, and see how 
you can profit by the devices he uses. 

In the "Woods : — Give an account of a long or a short trip 
In the woods, and tell what you observed. It might be well to 
plan this theme a number of days before writingjt, and in the 
interim to take a walk in the woods to get mental notes. In 
writing the theme,' give your chief attention to the trees — 
their situation, appearance, height, manner of growth from the 
seedling up, peculiarities. Make clear the differences between 
the kinds of trees, especially between varieties of the same 
species. You can make good use of color-words in your descrip- 
tions of leaves, flowers, seed-receptacles (cones, keys, wings, 
etc.), and berries. Keep your work simple, almost as if you were 
talking to some one who wishes information about the forest 
trees. 

COLLATERAL READINGS 

Our National Parks John Muir 

My First Summer in the Sierra " " 

The Mountains of California ■ . " « 

The Story of my Boyhood and Youth " " 

Stickeen : The Story of my Dog i« « 



220 JOHN MUIR 

The Yosemite John Muir 

The Giant Forest (chapter 18 of The 

Mountains Stewart Edward White 

The Pines (chapter 8 of The Moun- 
tains " " « 

The Blazed Trail " " « 

The Forest " " « 

The Heart of an Ancient Wood . . C. G. D. Roberts 
The Story of a Thousand-year Pine 

(in Wild Life on the Rockies) . . Enos A. Mills 
The Lodge-pole Pine (in Wild Life 

on the Rockies) " " 

Rocky Mountain Forests (in Wild 

Life on the Rockies) " " 

The Spell of the Rockies .... " " 

Under the Sky in California . . . C. F. Saunders 
Field Days in California .... Bradford Torrey 
The Snowing of the Pines (poem) . T. W. Higginson 
A Young Fir Wood (poem) . . . D. G. Rossetti 
The Spirit of the Pine (poem) . . Bayard Taylor 

To a Pine Tree J. R. Lowell 

Silverado Squatters Robert Louis Stevenson 

Travels with a Donkey " " " 

A Forest Fire (in 2'he Old Pacific 

Capital) " " « 

The Two Matches (in Fables) . . « « a 

In the Maine Woods Henry D. Thoreau 

Yosemite Trails J. S. Chase 

The Conservation of Natural Re- 
sources Charles R. Van Hise 

Getting Acquainted with the Trees J. H. McFarlaud 
The Trees (poem) ..... Josephine Preston Pea- 
body 
For biographical material relating to John Muir, consult : 
With John o' Birds and John o' Mountains, Century, 80 : 521 
(Portraits) ; At Home with Muir, Overland Monthly (New 
Series), 52 : 125, August, 1908; Craftsman, 7: 665 (page 637 for 
portrait), March, 1905; Craftsman, 23: 324 (Portrait); Outlook, 
80 : 303, January 3, 1905 ; Bookman, 26 : 593, February, 1908; 
World's Work, 17 : 11355, March, 1909 ; 19 : 12529, February, 
1910. 



WAITING 

JOHN BURROUGHS 

Serene, I fold my hands and wait, 
Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea ; 

I rave no more 'gainst time or fate. 
For lo ! my own shall come to me. 

I stay my haste, I make delays, 
For what avails this eager pace ? 

I stand amid the eternal ways. 

And what is mine shall know my face. 

Asleep, awake, by night or day, 
The friends I seek are seeking me ; 

No wind can drive my bark astray 
Nor change the tide of destiny. 

What matter if I stand alone ? 

I wait with joy the coming years ; 
My heart shall reap where it has sown. 

And garner up its fruit of tears. 

The law of love binds every heart 
And knits it to its utmost kin, 

Nor can our lives flow long apart 

From souls our secret souls would win. 

The stars come nightly to the sky. 
The tidal wave comes to the sea ; 

Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high 
Can keep my own away from me. 



222 JOHN BURROUGHS 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

This poem is so easy that it needs little explanation. It shows 
the calmness and confidence of one who feels that the universe 
is right, and that everything comes out well sooner or later. 
Read the poem through slowly. Its utmost kin means its most 
distant relations or connections. The tidal wave means the regu- 
lar and usual flow of the tide. Nor time nor space : — Perhaps 
Mr. Burroughs was thinking of the Bible, Romans 8 : 38, 39. 

Does the poem mean to encourage mere waiting, without ac- 
tion ? Does it discourage effort ? Just how much is it intended 
to convey ? Is the theory expressed here a good one ? Do you 
believe it to be true ? Read the verses again, slowly and care- 
fully, thinking what they mean. If you like them, take time to 
learn them. 

COLLATERAL READINGS 

For a list of Mr. Burrough's books, see page 177. 

Song : The year 's at the spring . . . Robert Browning 

The Building of the Chimney . . . Richard Watson Gilder 

With John o' Birds and John o' Moun- 
tains (Century Magazine, 80: 521) 

A Day at Slabsides (Outlook, 66: 351) Washington Gladden 
Century, 86: 884, October, 1915 (Portrait); Outlook, 78: 878, 

December 3, 1904. 

EXERCISES 

Try writing a stanza or two in the meter and with the rhyme 
that Mr. Burroughs uses. Below are given lines that may prove 
suggestive : — 

1. One night when all the sky was clear 

2. The plum tree near the garden wall 

3. I watched the children at their play 

4. The wind swept down across the plain 

5. The yellow leaves are drifting down 

6. Along the dusty way we sped (In an Automobile) 

7. I looked about my garden plot (In my Garden) 

8. The sky was red with sudden flame 

9. I walked among the forest trees 

10. He runs to meet me every day (My Dog) 



THE PONT DU GARD 

HENRY JAMES 

(Chapter xxvi of A Little Tour in France) 

It was a pleasure to feel one's self in Provence again, 
— the land where the silver-gray earth is impregnated 
with the light of the sky. To celebrate the event, as 
soon as I arrived at Nimes I engaged a caliche to con- 
vey me to the Pont du Gard. The day was yet young, 
and it was perfectly fair ; it appeared well, for a long- 
ish drive, to take advantage, without delay, of such 
security. After I had left the town I became more in- 
timate with that Provencal charm which I had already 
enjoyed from the window of the train, and which glowed 
in the sweet sunshine and the white rocks, and lurked 
in the smoke-puffs of the little olives. The olive-trees 
in Provence are half the landscape. They are neither 
so tall, so stout, nor so richly contorted as I have seen 
them beyond the Alps ; but this mild colorless bloom 
seems the very texture of the country. The road from 
Nimes, for a distance of fifteen miles, is superb ; broad 
enough for an army, and as white and firm as a dinner- 
table. It stretches away over undulations which sug- 
gest a kind of harmony ; and in the curves it makes 
through the wide, free country, where there is never 
a hedge or a wall, and the detail is always exquisite, 
there is something majestic, almost processional. Some 
twenty minutes before I reached the little inn that 
marks the termination of the drive, my vehicle met 
with an accident which just missed being serious, and 
which engaged the attention of a gentleman, who, fol- 



224 HENRY JAMES 

lowed by his groom and mounted on a strikingly hand- 
some horse, happened to ride up at the moment. This 
young man, who, with his good looks and charming 
manner, might have stepped out of a novel of Octave 
Feuillet, gave me some very intelligent advice in refer- 
ence to one of my horses that had been injured, and 
was so good as to accompany me to the inn, with the 
resources of which he was acquainted, to see that his 
recommendations were carried out. The result of our 
interview was that he invited me to come and look at 
a small but ancient chateau in the neighborhood, which 
he had the happiness — not the greatest in the world, 
he intimated — to inhabit, and at which I engaged to 
present myself after I should have spent an hour at 
the Pont du Gard. For the moment, when we sepa- 
rated, I gave all my attention to that great structure. 
You are very near it before you see it ; the ravine it 
spans suddenly opens and exhibits the picture. The 
scene at this point grows extremely beautiful. The 
ravine is the valley of the Gardon, which the road 
from Nimes has followed some time without taking 
account of it, but which, exactly at the right distance 
from the aqueduct, deepens and expands, and puts on 
those characteristics which are best suited to give it 
effect. The gorge becomes romantic, still, and solitary, 
and, with its white rocks and wild shrubbery, hangs 
over the clear, colored river, in whose slow course there 
is here and there a deeper pool. Over the valley, from 
side to side, and ever so high in the air, stretch the 
three tiers of the tremendous bridge. They are un- 
speakably imposing, and nothing could well be more 
Roman. The hugeness, the solidity, the unexpected- 
ness, the monumental rectitude of the whole thing 
leave you nothing to say — at the time — and make 



THE PONT DU GARD 225 

you stand gazing. You simply feel that it is noble and 
perfect, that it has the quality of greatness. A road, 
branching from the highway, descends to the level of 
the river and passes under one of the arches. This 
road has a wide margin of grass and loose stones, which 
slopes upward into the bank of the ravine. You may 
sit here as long as you please, staring up at the light, 
strong piers ; the spot is extremely natural, though 
two or three stone benches have been erected on it. I 
remained there an hour and got a complete impres- 
sion ; the place was perfectly soundless, and for the 
time, at least, lonely ; the splendid afternoon had be- 
gun to fade, and there was a fascination in the object 
I had come to see. It came to pass that at the same 
time I discovered in it a certain stupidity, a vague 
brutality. That element is rarely absent from great 
Roman work, which is wanting in the nice adaptation 
of the means to the end. The means are always exag- 
gerated ; the end is so much more than attained. The 
Roman rigidity was apt to overshoot the mark, and I 
suppose a race which could do nothing small is as de- 
fective as a race that can do nothing great. Of this 
Roman rigidity the Pont du Gard is an admirable ex- 
ample. It would be a great injustice, however, not to 
insist upon its beauty, — a kind of manly beauty, that 
of an object constructed not to please but to serve, 
and impressive simply from the scale on which it car- 
ries out this intention. The number of arches in each 
tier is different ; they are smaller and more numerous 
as they ascend. The preservation of the thing is ex- 
traordinary ; nothing has crumbled or collapsed ; every 
feature remains ; and the huge blocks of stone, of a 
brownish-yellow (as if they had been baked by the 
Proven9al sun for eighteen centuries), pile themselves. 



226 HENRY JAMES 

without mortar or cement, as evenly as the day they 
were laid together. All this to carry the water of a 
couple of springs to a little provincial city ! The con- 
duit on the top has retained its shape and traces of 
the cement with which it was lined. When the vague 
twilight began to gather, the lonely valley seemed to 
fill itself with the shadow of the Roman name, as if 
the mighty empire were still as erect as the supports 
of the aqueduct ; and it was open to a solitary tourist, 
sitting there sentimental, to believe that no people has 
ever been, or will ever be, as great as that, measured, 
as we measure the greatness of an individual, by the 
push they gave to what they undertook. The Pont du 
Gard is one of the three or four deepest impressions 
they have left ; it speaks of them in a manner with 
which they might have been satisfied. 

I feel as if it were scarcely discreet to indicate the 
whereabouts of the chateau of the obliging young man 
I had met on the way from Nimes ; I must content 
myself with saying that it nestled in an enchanting 
valley, — dans lefond^ as they say in France, — and 
that I took my course thither on foot, after leaving the 
Pont du Gard. I find it noted in my journal as " an 
adorable little corner." The principal feature of the 
place is a couple of very ancient towers, brownish-yel- 
low in hue, and mantled in scarlet Virginia-creeper. 
One of these towers, reputed to be of Saracenic origin, 
is isolated, and is only the more effective ; the other is 
incorporated in the house, which is delightfully frag- 
mentaiy and irregular. It had got to be late by this 
time, and the lonely castel looked crepuscular and mys- 
terious. An old housekeeper was sent for, who showed 
me the rambling interior ; and then the young man 
took me into a dim old drawing-room, which had no 



THE PONT DU GARD 227 

less than four chimney-pieces, all unlighted, and gave 
me a refection of fruit and sweet wine. When I praised 
the wine and asked him what it was, he said simply, 
" C'est du vin de ma mere ! " Throughout my little 
journey I had never yet felt myself so far from Paris ; 
and this was a sensation I enjoyed more than my host, 
who was an involuntary exile, consoling himself with 
laying out a manege, which he showed me as I walked 
away. His civility was great, and I was greatly touched 
by it. On my way back to the little inn where I had 
left my vehicle, I passed the Pont du Gard, and took 
another look at it. Its great arches made windows for 
the evening sky, and the rocky ravine, with its dusky 
cedars and shining river, was lonelier than before. At 
the inn I swallowed, or tried to swallow, a glass of 
horrible wine with my coachman ; after which, with 
my reconstructed team, I drove back to Nimes in the 
moonlight. It only added a more solitary whiteness 
to the constant sheen of the Provencal landscape. 

NOTES 

The Pont du Gard : — A famous aqueduct built by the 
Romans many years ago. 

Provence : — One of the old provinces in southeast France. 

Nimes : — (Neem) A town in southeast France, noted for 
its Roman ruins. 

caliche: — (ka lash') The French term for a light covered 
carriage with seats for four besides the driver. • 

Octave Feuillet : — A French writer, the author of The 
Romance of a Poor Young Man ■ Feulllet's heroes are young, 
dark, good-looking, and poetic. 

chateau : — The country residence of a wealthy or titled 
person. 

Garden : — A river in France flowing into the Rhone. 

nice : — Look up the meaning of this word. 

dans le fond : — In the bottom. 



228 HENRY JAMES 

Saracenic: — The Saracen invaders of France were van- 
quished at Tours in 732 a.d. 
castel : — A castle. 

C'est, etc. : — It is some of my mother's wine, 
manage : — A place where horses are kept and trained. 



QUESTIONS FOR STUDY 

Can you find out anything about Provence and its history ? 
By means of what details does Mr. James give you an idea of 
the country ? What is meant by processional f Why is the epi- 
sode of the young man particularly pleasing at the point at 
which it is related ? How does the author show the character of 
the aqueduct ? What does monumental rectitude mean ? Why is it 
a good term ? What is meant here bj'^ " a certain stupidity, a 
vague brutality " ? Can you tliink of any great Roman works 
of which Mr. James's statement is true ? What did the Romans 
most commonly build? Can you find out something of their 
style of building ? Are there any reasons why the arches at the, 
top should be smaller and lighter than those below ? What does 
this great aqueduct show of the Roman people and the Roman 
government ? Notice what Mr. James says of the way in which 
we measure greatness : Is this a good way ? Why would the Ro- 
mans like the way in which the Pont du Gard speaks of them ? 
Why is it not " discreet " to tell where the young man's chateau 
is ? Why does the traveler feel so far from Paris ? Why 
does the young man treat the traveler with such unnecessary 
friendliness ? See how the author closes his chapter by bringing 
the descripciou round to the Pont du Gard again, and ending 
with the note struck in the first lines. Is this a good method ? 



THEME SUBJECTS 

A Bridge A Moonlight Scene 

Country Roads A Picturesque Ravine 

An Accident on the Road What I should Like to See in 

A Remote Dwelling Europe 

The Stranger Traveling in Europe 

At a Country Hotel Reading a Guide Book 

Roman Roads The Baedeker 



THE PONT DU GARD 229 

A Ruin Level Country 

The Character of the Romans A Sunny Day 

The Romans in France The Parlor 



SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING 

At a Country Hotel : — Tell how you happened to go to 
the hotel (this part may be true or merely imagined). Describe 
your approach, on foot or in some conveyance. Give your first 
general impression of the building and its surroundings. What 
persons were visible when you reached the entrance ? What did 
they say and do ? How did you feel ? Describe the room that 
you entered, noting any striking or amusing things. Tell of any 
particularly interesting person, and what he (or she) said. Did 
you have something to eat ? If so, describe the dining-room, 
and tell about the food. Perhaps you will have something to 
say about the waiter. How long did you stay at the hotel? 
What incident was connected with your departure ? Were you 
glad or sorry to leave ? 

The Bridge : — Choose a large bridge that you have seen. 
Where is it, and what stream or ravine does it span ? When 
was it built ? Clearly indicate the point of view of your de- 
scription. If you change the point of view, let the reader know 
of your doing so. Give a general idea of the size of the bridge : 
You need not give measurements ; try rather to make the 
reader feel the size from the comparisons that you use. De- 
scribe the banks at each end of the bridge, and the effect of the 
water or the abyss between. How is the bridge supported ? Try 
to make the reader feel its solidity and safety. Is it clumsy or 
graceful ? Why ? Give any interesting details in its appear- 
ance. What conveyances or persons are passing over it ? How 
does the bridge make you feel ? 

COLLATERAL READINGS 

A Little Tour in France Henry James 

A Small Boy and Others " " 

Portraits of Places , " " 

Travels with a Donkey R. L. Stevenson 

An Inland Voyage " " 



230 HENRY JAMES 

Along French Byways Clifton Johnson 

Seeing France with Uncle John . . Anne Warner 

The Story of France Mary Macgregor 

The Reds of the Midi Felix Gras 

A Wanderer in Paris E. V. Lucas 

An American in Europe (poem) . . Henry Van Dyke 

Home Thoughts from Abroad • . . Robert Browning 

In and Out of Three Normandy Inns Anna Bowman Dodd 

Cathedral Days « " " 

From Poukapog to Pesth . . . . T, B. Aldrich 

Our Hundred Days in Europe . . . O. W. Holmes 

One Year Abroad Blanche Willis Howard 

Well-worn Roads F. H. Smith 

Gondola Days " " 

Saunterings ..CD. Warner 

By Oak and Thorn ....... Alice Brown 

Fresh Fields John Burroughs 

Our Old Home Nathaniel Hawthorne 

Penelope's Progress Kate Douglas Wiggin 

Penelope's Experiences " " " 

A Cathedral Courtship " " « 

Ten Days in Spain Kate Fields 

Russian Rambles Isabel F. Hapgood 

For biography and criticism of Mr. James, see : American 
Writers of To-day, pp. 68-86, H. C, Vedder ; American Prose 
Masters, pp. 337-400, W. C. Brownell ; and (for the teacher), 
Century, 84 : 108 (Portrait) and 87 : 150 (Portrait) ; Scribners, 
48 : 670 (Portrait) ; Chautauquan, 64 : 146 (Portrait). 



THE YOUNGEST SON OF HIS 
FATHER'S HOUSE 

BY ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH 

The eldest son of his father's house. 
His was the right to have and hold ; 
He took the chair before the hearth, 
And he was master of all the gold. 

The second son of his father's house, 
He took the wheatfields broad and fair, 
He took the meadows beside the brook, 
And the white flocks that pastured there. 

'"'' Pij^e high — pipe low I Along the way 
Frovi dawn till eve I needs must sing ! 
Who has a song throughout the day. 
He has no need of anything .-^ " 

The youngest son of his father's house 
Had neither gold nor flocks for meed. 
He went to the brook at break of day, 
And made a pipe out of a reed. 

'■'■Pipe high — pipe low! Each wind that blows 
Is C077irade to my wandering . 
Who has a song wherever he goes. 
He has no need of anything ! " 

His brother's wife threw open the door. 
" Piper, come in for a while," she said. 



232 ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH 

" Thou shalt sit at my hearth since thou art so poor 
And thou shalt give me a song instead ! " 

Pipe high — pipe low — all over the wold ! 
"Lad, wilt thou not come in?" asked she. 
" Who has a song, he feels no cold ! 

My brother's hearth is mine own," quoth he. 

" Pipe high — pipe low ! For what care I 
Though there he no hearth on the ivide gray plain f 
I have set my face to the open sky, 
And have cloaked myself in the thick gray rain.^^ 

Over the hills where the white clouds are, 
He piped to the sheep till they needs must come. 
They fed in pastures strange and far, 
But at fall of night he brought them home. 

They followed him, bleating, wherever he led : 

He called his brother out to see. 
" I have brought thee my flocks for a gift," he said, 
" For thou seest that they are mine," quoth he. 

" Pipe high — ^jijoe low ! wherever I go 
The ivide grain presses to hear me sing. 
Who has a song, though his state he low. 
He has no need of anything T 

" Ye have taken my house," he said, " and my sheep, 
But ye had no heart to take me in. 
I will give ye my right for your own to keep, "^ 
But ye be not my kin. 

" To the kind fields my steps are led. 
My people rush across the plain. 



YOUNGEST SON OF HIS FATHER'S HOUSE 233 

My bare feet shall not fear to tread 
With the cold white feet of the rain. 

" My father's house is wherever I pass; 
My brothers are each stock and stone ; 
My mother's bosom in the grass 
Yields a sweet slumber to her son. 

" Ye are rich in house and flocks," said he, 
" Though ye have no heart to take me in. 

There was only a reed that was left for me, 

And ye be not my kin." 

" Pipe high — pipe loio ! Though skies he gray. 
Who has a song, he needs must roam ! 
Even though ye call all day, all day, 

' Brother, wilt thou come home f ' " 

Over the meadows and over the wold. 
Up to the hills where the skies begin, 
The youngest son of his father's house 
Went forth to find his kin. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

The stanzas in italic are a kind of refrain; they represent the 
music of the youngest son. 

Why does the piper not go into the house when his brother's 
wife invites him ? What does he mean when he says, " My 
brother's hearth is mine own " ? Why does he say that the sheep 
are his ? What does he mean when he says, " I will give ye my 
right," etc. ? Why are his brothers not his kin ? Who are the 
people that " rush across the plain " ? Explain the fourteenth 
stanza. Why did the piper go forth to find his kin ? Whom 
would he claim as his kindred ? Why ? Does the poem have 
a deeper meaning than that which first appears ? What kind of 
person is represented by the youngest son ? What are meant by 



234 ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH 

his pipe and the music ? Who are those who cast him out ? 
Re-read the whole poem with the deeper meaning in mind. 



COLLATERAL READINGS 

The Prophet Josephine Preston Peabody 

The Piper: Act I " « " 

The Shepherd of King Admetus James Russell Lowell 

The Shoes that Danced .... Anna Hempstead Branch 
The Heart of the Road and Other 

Poems " " « 

Rose of the Wind and Other 

Poems " " « 



TENNESSEE'S PARTNER 

BRET HARTE 

I DO not think that we ever knew his real name. 
Our ignorance of it certainly never gave us any social 
inconvenience, for at Sandy Bar in 1854 most men 
were christened anew. Sometimes these appellatives 
were derived from some distinctiveness of dress, as in 
the case of " Dungaree Jack " ; or from some peculiar- 
ity of habit, as shown in " Saleratus Bill," so called 
from an undue proportion of that chemical in his daily 
bread ; or from some unlucky slip, as exhibited in " The 
Iron Pirate," a mild, inoffensive man, who earned that 
baleful title by his unfortunate mispronunciation of the 
term " iron pyrites." Perhaps this may have been the 
beginning of a rude heraldry ; but I am constrained 
to think that it was because a man's real name in that 
day rested solely upon his own unsupported statement. 
" Call yourself Clifford, do you ? " said Boston, ad- 
dressing a timid newcomer with infinite scorn ; " hell 
is full of such Cliffords ! " He then introduced the 
unfortunate man, whose name happened to be really 
Clifford, as " Jaybird Charley," — an unhallowed in- 
spiration of the moment that clung to him ever after. 

But to return to Tennessee's Partner, whom we 
never knew by any other than this relative title. That 
he had ever existed as a separate and distinct indi- 
viduality we only learned later. It seems that in 1853 
he left Poker Flat to go to San Francisco, ostensibly 
to procure a wife. He never got any farther than 
Stockton. At that place he was attracted by a young 



236 BRET HARTE 

person who waited upon the table at the hotel where 
he took his meals. One morning he said something to 
her which caused her to smile not unkindly, to some- 
what coquettishly break a plate of toast over his up- 
turned, serious, simple face, and to retreat to the 
kitchen. He followed her, and emerged a few mo- 
ments later, covered with more toast and victory. That 
day week they were married by a justice of the peace, 
and returned to Poker Flat. I am aware that some- 
thing more might be made of this episode, but I pre- 
fer to tell it as it was current at Sandy Bar, — in the 
gulches and bar-rooms, — where all sentiment was 
modified by a strong sense of humor. 

Of their married felicity but little is known, per- 
haps for the reason that Tennessee, then living with 
his partner, one day took occasion to say something to 
the bride on his own account, at which, it is said, she 
smiled not unkindly and chastely retreated, — this 
time as far as Marysville, where Tennessee followed 
her, and where they went to housekeeping without 
the aid of a justice of the peace. Tennessee's Partner 
took the loss of his wife simply and seriously, as was 
his fashion. But to everybody's surprise, when Ten- 
nessee one day returned from Marysville, without his 
partner's wife, — she having smiled and retreated with 
somebody else, — Tennessee's Partner was the first 
man to shake his hand and greet him with affection. 
The boys who had gathered in the canon to see the 
shooting were naturally indignant. Their indignation 
migfht have found vent in sarcasm but for a certain 
look in Tennessee's Partner's eye that indicated a lack 
of humorous appreciation. In fact, he was a grave 
man, with a steady application to practical detail 
which was unpleasant in a difficulty. 



TENNESSEE'S PARTNER 237 

Meanwhile a. popular feeling against Tennessee had 
grown up on the Bar. He was known to be a gambler ; 
he was suspected to be a thief. In these suspicions 
Tennessee's Partner was equally compromised ; his 
continued intimacy with Tennessee after the affair 
above quoted could only be accounted for on the hypo- 
thesis of a copartnership of crime. At last Tennessee's 
guilt became flagrant. One day he overtook a stranger 
on his way to Red Dog. The stranger afterward relat- 
ed that Tennessee beguiled the time with interesting 
anecdote and reminiscence, but illogically concluded 
the interview in the following words : " And now, young 
man, I '11 trouble you for your knife, your pistols, and 
your money. You see your weppings might get you in- 
to trouble at Red Dog, and your money 's a temptation 
to the evilly disposed. I think you said your address 
was San Francisco. I shall endeavor to call." It may 
be stated here that Tennessee had a fine flow of humor, 
which no business preoccupation could wholly subdue. 

This exploit wa§ his last. Red Dog and Sandy Bar 
made common cause against the highwayman. Ten- 
nessee was hunted in very much the same fashion as 
his prototype, the grizzly. As the toils closed around 
him, he made a desperate dash through the Bar, 
emptying his revolver at the crowd before the Arcade 
Saloon, and so on up Grizzly Canon ; but at its farther 
extremity he was stopped by a small man on a gray 
horse. The men looked at each other a moment in si- 
lence. Both were fearless, both self-possessed and in- 
dependent, and both types of a civilization that in the 
seventeenth century would have been called heroic, 
but in the nineteenth simply " reckless." 

" VV^hat have you got there? — I call," said Ten- 
nessee quietly. 



238 BRET HARTE 

" Two bowers and an ace," said the stranger as 
quietly, showing two revolvers and a bowie-knife. 

" That takes me," returned Tennessee ; and, with 
this gambler's epigram, he threw away his useless 
pistol and rode back with his captor. 

It was a warm night. The cool breeze which usually 
sprang up with the going down of the sun behind the 
chaparral-crested mountain was that evening withheld 
from Sandy Bar. The little canon was stifling with 
heated resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on 
the Bar sent forth faint sickening exhalations. The 
feverishness of day and its fierce passions still filled 
the camp. Lights moved restlessly along the bank of 
the river, striking no answering reflection from its 
tawny current. Against the blackness of the pines the 
windows of the old loft above the express-office stood 
out staringly bright ; and through their curtainless 
panes the loungers below could see the forms of those 
who were even then deciding the fate of Tennessee. 
And above all this, etched on the dark firmament, rose 
the Sierra, remote and passionless, crowned with re- 
moter passionless stars. 

The trial of Tennessee was conducted as fairly as 
was consistent with a judge and jury who felt them- 
selves to some extent obliged to justify, in their ver- 
dict, the previous irregularities of arrest and indict- 
ment. The law of Sandy Bar was implacable, but not 
vengeful. The excitement and personal feeling of the 
chase were over ; with Tennessee safe in their hands, 
they were ready to listen patiently to any defense, 
which they were already satisfied was insufficient. 
There being no doubt in their own minds, they 
were willing to give the prisoner the benefit of any 
that might exist. Secure in the hypothesis that he 



TENNESSEE'S PARTNER 239 

ought to be hanged on general principles, they in- 
dulged him with more latitude of defense than his 
reckless hardihood seemed to ask. The Judge appeared 
to be more anxious than the prisoner, who, otherwise 
unconcerned, evidently took a grim pleasure in the 
responsibility he had created. " I don't take any hand 
in this yer game," had been his invariable but good- 
humored reply to all questions. The Judge — who 
was also his captor — for a moment vaguely regretted 
that he had not shot him "on sight" that morning, 
but presently dismissed this human weakness as un- 
worthy of the judicial mind. Nevertheless, when there 
was a tap at the door, and it was said that Tennessee's 
Partner was there on behalf of the prisoner, he was ad- 
mitted at once without question. Perhaps the younger 
members of the jury, to whom the proceedings were 
becoming irksomely thoughtful, hailed him as a relief. 
For he was not, certainly, an imposing figure. Short 
and stout, with a square face, sunburned into a pre- 
ternatural redness, clad in a loose duck " jumper " 
and trousers streaked and splashed with red soil, his 
aspect under any circumstances would have been 
quaint, and was now even ridiculous. As he stooped to 
deposit at his feet a heavy carpetbag he was carrying, 
it became obvious, from partially developed legends 
and inscriptions, that the material with which his trou- 
sers had been patched had been originally intended 
for a less ambitious covering. Yet he advanced with 
great gravity, and after shaking the hand of each per- 
son in the room with labored cordiality, he wiped his 
serious perplexed face on a red bandana handkerchief, 
a shade lighter than his complexion, laid his powerful 
hand upon the table to steady himself, and thus ad- 
dressed the Judge : — 



240 BRET HARTE 

" I was passin' by," he began, by way of apology, 
" and I thought I 'd just step in and see how things 
was gittin' on with Tennessee thar, — my pardner. 
It 's a hot night. I disremember any sich weather 
before on the Bar." 

He paused a moment, but nobody volunteering any 
other meteorological recollection, he again had re- 
course to his pocket-handkerchief, and for some mo- 
ments mopped his face diligently. 

" Have you anything to say on behalf of the pris- 
oner?" said the Judge finally. 

" Thet 's it," said Tennessee's Partner, in a tone of 
relief. " I come yar as Tennessee's pardner, — know- 
ing him nigh on four year, off and on, wet and dry, in 
luck and out o' luck. His ways ain't aller my ways, 
but thar ain't any p'ints in that young man, thar ain't 
any liveliness as he 's been up to, as I don't know. 
And you sez to me, sez you, — confidential-like, and 
between man and man, — sez you, ' Do you know any- 
thing in his behalf ? ' and I sez to you, sez I, — con- 
fidential-like, as between man and man, — ' What 
should a man know of his pardner? ' " 

" Is this all you have to say ? " asked the Judge im- 
patiently, feeling, perhaps, that a dangerous sympathy 
of humor was beginning to humanize the court. 

" Thet 's so," continued Tennessee's Partner. " It 
ain't for me to say anything agin' him. And now, 
what 's the case ? Here 's Tennessee wants money, 
wants it bad, and does n't like to ask it of his old 
pardner. Well, what does Tennessee do ? He lays for 
a stranger, and he fetches that stranger ; and you lays 
for Aim, and you fetches him ; and the honors is easy. 
And I put it to you, bein' a f a'r-minded man, and to you, 
gentlemen all, as fa'r-minded men, ef this is n't so." 



TENNESSEE'S PARTNER 241 

" Prisoner," said the Judge, interrupting, " have 
you any questions to ask this man? " 

" No ! no ! " continued Tennessee's Partner hastily. 
" I play this yer hand alone. To come down to the 
bed-rock, it 's just this : Tennessee, thar, has played it 
pretty rough and expensive-like on a stranger, and on 
this yer camp. And now, what 's the fair thing ? Some 
would say more, some would say less. Here 's seven- 
teen hundred dollars in coarse gold and a watch, — 
it 's about all my pile, — and call it square ! " And 
before a hand could be raised to prevent him, he had 
emptied the contents of the carpetbag upon the table. 

For a moment his life was in jeopardy. One or two 
men sprang to their feet, several hands groped for 
hidden weapons, and a suggestion to " throw him from 
the window " was only overridden by a gesture from 
the Judge. Tennessee laughed. And apparently ob- 
livious of the excitement, Tennessee's Partner im- 
proved the opportunity to mop his face again with his 
handkerchief. 

When order was restored, and the man was made 
to understand, by the use of forcible figures and 
rhetoric, that Tennessee's offense could not be con- 
doned by money, his face took a more serious and 
sanguinary hue, and those who were nearest to him 
noticed that his rough hand trembled slightly on the 
table. He hesitated a moment as he slowly returned 
the gold to the carpetbag, as if he had not yet entirely 
caught the elevated sense of justice which swayed the 
tribunal, and was perplexed with the belief that he had 
not offered enough. Then he turned to the Judge, and 
saying, " This yer is a lone hand, played alone, and 
without my pardner," he bowed to the jury and was 
about to withdraw, when the Judge called him back : — 



242 BRET HARTE 

" If you have anything to say to Tennessee, you 
had better say it now." 

For the first time that evening the eyes of the pris- 
oner and his strange advocate met. Tennessee smiled, 
showed his white teeth, and saying, " Euchred, old 
mat! ! " held out his hand. Tennessee's Partner took 
it in his own, and saying, " I just dropped in as I was 
passin' to see how things was gettin' on," let the hand 
passively fall, and adding that " it was a warm night," 
again mopped his face with his handkerchief, and 
without another word withdrew. 

The two men never again met each other alive. For 
the unparalleled insult of a bribe offered to Judge 
Lynch — who, whether bigoted, weak, or narrow, was 
at least incorruptible — firmly fixed in the mind of 
that mythical personage any wavering determination 
of Tennessee's fate ; and at the break of day he was 
marched, closely guarded, to meet it at the top of 
Marley's Hill. 

How he met it, how cool he was, how he refused to 
say anything, how perfect were the arrangements of 
the committee, were all duly reported, with the ad- 
dition of a warning moral and example to all future 
evil-doers, in the " Red Dog Clarion," by its editor, 
who was present, and to whose vigorous English I 
cheerfully refer the reader. But the beauty of that 
midsummer morning, the blessed amity of earth and 
air and sky, the awakened life of the free woods 
and hills, the joyous renewal and promise of Nature, 
and above all, the infinite serenity that thrilled through 
each, was not reported, as not being a part of the social 
lesson. And yet, when the weak and foolish deed was 
done, and a life, with its possibilities and responsi- 
bilities, had passed out of the misshapen thing that 



TENNESSEE'S PARTNER 243 

dangled between earth and sky, the birds sang, the 
flowers bloomed, the sun shone, as cheerily as before ; 
and possibly the " Red Dog Clarion " was right. 

Tennessee's Partner was not in the group that sur- 
rounded the ominous tree. But as they turned to dis- 
perse, attention was drawn to the singular appearance 
of a motionless donkey-cart halted at the side of the 
road. As they approached, they at once recognized 
the venerable " Jenny " and the two-wheeled cart as 
the property of Tennessee's Partner, used by him in 
carrying dirt from his claim ; and a few paces distant 
the owner of the equipage himself, sitting under a 
buckeye-tree, wiping the perspiration from his glow- 
ing face. In answer to an inquiry, he said he had 
come for the body of the " diseased," " if it was all the 
same to the committee." He did n't wish to " hurry 
anything " ; he could " wait." He was not working 
that day ; and when the gentlemen were done with the 
" diseased," he would take him. " Ef thar is any pres- 
ent," he added, in his simple, serious way, " as would 
care to jine in the fun'l, they kin come." Perhaps it 
was from a sense of humor, which I have already in- 
timated was a feature of Sandy Bar, — perhaps it was 
from something even better than that, but two thirds 
of the loungers accepted the invitation at once. 

It was noon when the body of Tennessee was de- 
livered into the hands of his partner. As the cart drew 
up to the fatal tree, we noticed that it contained a 
rough oblong box, — apparently made from a section 
of sluicing, — and half filled with bark and the tassels 
of pine. The cart was further decorated with slips of 
willow and made fragrant with buckeye-blossoms. 
When the body was deposited in the box, Tennessee's 
Partner's drew over it a piece of tarred canvas, and 



244 BRET HARTE 

gravely mounting tlie narrow seat in front, with his 
feet upon the shafts, urged the little donkey forward. 
The equipage moved slowly on, at that decorous pace 
which was habitual with Jenny even under less solemn 
circumstances. The men — half curiously, half jest- 
ingly, but all good-humoredly — strolled along beside 
the cart, some in advance, some a little in the rear of 
the homely catafalque. But whether from the narrow- 
ing of the road or some present sense of decorum, as 
the cart passed on, the company fell to the rear in cou- 
ples, keeping step, and otherwise assuming the external 
show of a formal procession. Jack Folinsbee, who had 
at the outset played a funeral march in dumb show 
upon an imaginary trombone, desisted from a lack of 
sympathy and appreciation, — not having, perhaps, 
your true humorist's capacity to be content with the 
enjoyment of his own fun. 

The way led through Grizzly Canon, by this time 
clothed in funereal drapery and shadows. The red- 
woods, burying their moccasined feet in the red soil, 
stood in Indian file along the track, trailing an un- 
couth benediction from their bending boughs upon the 
passing bier. A hare, surprised into helpless inactiv- 
ity, sat upright and pulsating in the ferns by the road- 
side as the cortege went by. Squirrels hastened to gain 
a secure outlook from higher boughs ; and the blue- 
jays, spreading their wings, fluttered before them like 
outriders, until the outskirts of Sandy Bar were 
reached, and the solitary cabin of Tennessee's Part- 
ner. 

Viewed under more favorable circumstances, it 
would not have been a cheerful place. The unpictur- 
esque site, the rude and unlovely outlines, the unsav- 
ory details, which distinguish the nest-building of 



TENNESSEE'S PARTNER 245 

the California miner, were all here with the dreari- 
ness of decay superadded. A few paces from the cabin 
there was a rough inclosure, which, in the brief days 
of Tennessee's Partner's matrimonial felicity, had 
been used as a garden, but was now overgrown with 
fern. As we approached it, we were surprised to find 
that what we had taken for a recent attempt at culti- 
vation was the broken soil about an open grave. 

The cart was halted before the inclosure, and re- 
jecting the offers of assistance with the same air of 
simple self-reliance he had displayed throughout, Ten- 
nessee's Partner lifted the rough coffin on his back, 
and deposited it unaided within the shallow grave. He 
then nailed down the board which served as a lid, and 
moimting the little mound of earth beside it, took off 
his hat and slowly mopped his face with his handker- 
chief. This the crowd felt was a preliminary to speech, 
and they disposed themselves variously on stumps and 
boulders, and sat expectant. 

" When a man," began Tennessee's Partner slowly, 
" has been running free all day, what 's the natural 
thing for him to do ? Why, to come home. And if he 
ain't in a condition to go home, what can his best 
friend do? Why, bring him home. And here's Ten- 
nessee has been running free, and we brings him home 
from his wandering." He paused and picked up a 
fragment of quartz, rubbed it thoughtfully on his 
sleeve, and went on : " It ain't the first time that I 've 
packed him on my back, as you see'd me now. It ain't 
the first time that I brought him to this yer cabin 
when he could n't help himself ; it ain't the first time 
that I and Jinny have waited for him on yon hill, and 
picked him up and so fetched him home, when he 
could n't speak and did n't know me. And now that 



246 BRET HARTE 

it 's the last time, why " — he paused and rubbed the 
quartz gently on his sleeve - — " you see it 's sort o£ 
rough on his pardner. And now, gentlemen," he 
added abruptly, picking up his long-handled shovel, 
" the f un'l 's over ; and my thanks, and Tennessee's 
thanks, to you for your trouble." 

Resisting any proffers of assistance, he began to fill 
in the grave, turning his back upon the crowd, that 
after a few moments' hesitation gradually withdrew. 
As they crossed the little ridge that hid Sandy Bar 
from view, some, looking back, thought they could 
see Tennessee's Partner, his work done, sitting upon 
the grave, his shovel between his knees, and his face 
buried in his red bandana handkerchief. But it was 
argued by others that you could n't tell his face from 
his handkerchief at that distance, and this point re- 
mained undecided. 

In the reaction that followed the feverish excite- 
ment of that day, Tennessee's Partner was not forgot- 
ten. A secret investigation had cleared him of any 
complicity in Tennessee's guilt, and left only a sus- 
picion of his general sanity. Sandy Bar made a point 
of calling on him, and proffering various uncouth but 
well-meant kindnesses. But from that day his rude 
health and great strength seemed visibly to decline ; 
and when the rainy season fairly set in, and the tiny 
grass-blades were beginning to peep from the rocky 
mound above Tennessee's grave, he took to his bed. 

One night, when the pines beside the cabin were 
swaying in the storm and trailing their slender fin- 
gers over the roof, and the roar and rush of the swol- 
len river were heard below, Tennessee's Partner lifted 
his head from the pillow, saying, " It is time to go for 
Tennessee ; I must put Jinny in the cart " ; and would 



TENNESSEE'S PARTNER 247 

have risen from his bed but for the restraint of his 
attendant. Struggling, he still pursued his singular 
fancy : " There, now, steady, Jinny, — steady, old 
girl. How dark it is ! Look out for the ruts, — and 
look out for him, too, old gal. Sometimes, you know, 
when he 's blind drunk, he drops down right in the 
trail. Keep on straight up to the pine on the top of 
the hill. Thar ! I told you so ! — thar he is, — coming 
this way, too, — all by himself, sober, and his face 
a-shining. Tennessee ! Pardner ! " 
And so they met. 

NOTES 

Sandy Bar : — The imaginary mining-camp in whicli Bret 
Harte laid the scenes of many of his stories. 

dungaree : — A coarse kind of unbleached cotton cloth. 

I call : — An expression used in the game of euchre. 

bovrers : — Boioer is from the German word bauer, meaning 
a peasant, — so called from the jack or knave ; the right bower, 
in the game of euchre, is the jack of trumps, and the left bower 
is the other jack of the same color. 

chaparral : — A thicket of scrub-oaks or thorny shrubs. 

euchred : — Defeated, as in the game of euchre. 

Judge Lynch : — A name used for the hurried judging and 
executing of a suspected person, by private citizens, without due 
process of law. A Virginian named Lynch is said to have been 
connected with the origin of the expression. 

" diseased " : — Tennessee's Partner means deceased. 

sluicing : — A trough for water, fitted with gates and valves ; 
it is used in washing out gold from the soil. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

Why is the first sentence a good introduction ? Compare it 
with the first sentence of Quite So, page 21. In this selection, 
why does the author say so much about names ? Of what value 
is the first paragraph ? Why is it necessary to tell about Ten- 
nessee's Partner's earlier experiences ? Who were " the boys " 



248 BRET HARTE 

who gathered to see the shooting ? Why did they think there 
would be shooting ? Why was there not ? Why does the author 
not give us a fuller picture of Tennessee ? What is the proof 
that he had " a fine flow of humor " ? Try in a few words to sum 
up his character. Read carefully the paragraph beginning " It 
was a warm night " : How does the author give us a good pic- 
ture of Sandy Bar ? Tell in your own words the feelings of the 
judge, the prisoner, and the jury, as explained in the paragraph 
beginning " The trial of Tennessee." What does the author 
gain by such expressions as " a less ambitious covering," " mete- 
orological recollection " ? What does Tennessee's Partner mean 
when he says " What should a man know of his pardner " ? 
Why did the judge think that humor would be dangerous ? 
Why are the people angry when Tennessee's Partner ofPers his 
seventeen hundred dollars for Tennessee's release ? Why does 
Tennessee's Partner take its rejection so calmly ? What effect 
does his offer have on the jury ? What does the author mean 
by " the weak and foolish deed " ? Does he approve the hang- 
ing ? Why does Tennessee's Partner not show any grief ? 
What do you think of Jack Folinsbee ? What is gained by the 
long passage of description ? What does Tennessee's Partner's 
speech show about the friendship of the two men ? About 
friendship in general ? Do men often care so much for each 
other ? Is it possible that Tennessee's Partner died of grief ? 
Is the conclusion good ? Comment on the' kind of men who figure 
in the story. Are there any such men now ? Why is this called 
a very good story ? 

Some time after you have read the story, run through it and 
see how many different sections or scenes there are in it. How 
are these sections linked together ? Look carefully at the begin- 
ning of each paragraph and see how the connection is made with 
the paragraph before. 

THEME SUBJECTS 

Two Friends Early Days in our County 

A Miner's Cabin Bret Harte's Best Stories 

The Thief The Escaped Convict 

The Road through the Woods The Highwayman 

The Trial A Lumber Camp 

A Scene in the Court Room Roughing It 



TENNESSEE'S PARTNER 249 

The Judge A Mining Town 

The Robbers' Rendezvous Underground with the Miners 

An Odd Character Capturing the Thieyes 

Early Days in the West The Sheriff 

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING 

Two Friends : — Tell where these two friends lived and 
how long they had known each other. Describe each one, ex- 
plaining his peculiarities ; perhaps you can make his character 
clear by telling some incident concerning him. What seemed to 
be the attraction between the two friends ? Were they much 
together ? What did people say of them ? What did they do 
for each other ? Did they talk to others about their friendship ? 
Did either make a sacrifice for the other ? If so, tell about it 
rather fully. Was there any talk about it ? What was the result 
of the sacrifice ? Was the friendship ever broken ? 

Early Days in our County : — Perhaps you can get mate- 
rial for this from some old settlers, or from a county history. 
Tell of the first settlement : Who was first on the ground, and 
why did he choose this particular region ? What kind of shelter 
was erected ? How fast did the settlement grow ? Tell some 
incidents of the early days. You might speak also of the proc- 
esses of clearing the land and of building ; of primitive methods 
of living, and the difficulty of getting supplies. Were there any 
dangers ? Speak of several prominent persons, and tell what 
they did. Go on and tell of development of the settlements and 
the surrounding country. Were there any strikingly good 
methods of making money ? Was there any excitement over 
land, or gold, or high prices of products ? Were there any mis- 
fortunes, such as floods, or droughts, or fires, or cyclones ? 
When did the railroad reach the region ? What differences did 
it make ? What particular influences have brought about recent 
conditions ? 

The Sheriff : — Describe the sheriff — his physique, his fea- 
tures, his clothes, his manner. Does he look the part ? Do you 
know, or can you imagine, one of his adventures ? Perhaps you 
will wish to tell his story in his own words. Think carefully 
whether it would be better to do this, or to tell the story in the 



250 BRET HARTE 

third person. Make the tale as lively and stirring as possible. 
Remember that when you are reporting the talk of the persons 
involved, it is better to quote their words directly. See that 
everything you say helps in making the situation clear or in ac- 
tually telling the story. Close the story rather quickly after 
its outcome has been made quite clear. 

COLLATERAL READINGS 

How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar Bret Harte 

The Outcasts of Poker Flat " " 

The Luck of Roaring Camp •' " 

Baby Sylvester « «« 

A Waif of the Plains « « 

How I Went to the Mines ..... «' « 

M'liss « « 

Frontier Stories " . " " 

Tales of the Argonauts « « 

A Sappho of Green Springs and Other 

Stories " " 

Pony Tracks Frederic Remington 

Crooked Trails " " 

Coeur d'Alene > . Mary Hallock Foote 

The Led-Horse Claim " " « 

Wolfville Days Alfred Henry Lewis 

Wolfville Nights " " « 

The Sunset Trail '« " " 

Pathfinders of the West Agnes C. Laut 

The Old Santa F6 Trail H. Inman 

Stories of the Great West Theodore Roosevelt 

California and the Californians . . . D. S. Jordan 

Our Italy C. D. Warner 

California Josiah Royce 

The West from a Car Window . . . . R.H.Davis 

The Story of the Railroad Cy Warman 

Roughing It S. L. Clemens 

Poems Joaquin Miller 

Appropriate poems by Bret Harte : — 

John Burns of Gettysburg 
In the Tunnel 



TENNESSEE'S PARTNER 251 

The Lost Galleon 

Grizzly 

Battle Bunny 

The Wind in the Chimney 

Reveille 

Plain Language from Truthful James (The Heathen Chinee) 

Highways and Byways in the Rocky 

Mountains Clifton Johnson 

Trails of the Pathfinders G. B. Grinnell 

Stories of California E. M. Sexton 

Glimpses of California Helen Hunt Jackson 

California : Its History and Romance . J. S. McGroarty 

Heroes of California G. W. James 

Recollections of an Old Pioneer ... P. H. Bennett 

The Mountains of California .... John Muir 

Romantic California E. C. Peixotto 

Silverado Squatters R. L. Stevenson 

Jimville : A Bret Harte Town (in Atlantic 

Monthly, November, 1902) .... Mary Austin 

The Prospector (poem) Robert W. Service 

The Rover " " « 

The Life of Bret Harte ...... H. C. Merwin 

Bret Harte Henry W. Boynton 

Bret Harte T. E. Pemberton 

American Writers of To-day, pp. 212-229 H. C. Vedder 

Bookman, 15 : 312 (see also map on page 313). 

For stories of famous friendships, look up : — 

Damon and Pythias (any good encyclopedia). 

Patroclus and Achilles (the Iliad). 

David and Jonathan (the Bible : 1st Samuel 18 : 1-4 ; 19: 1-7 ; 
chapter 20, entire ; 23 : 16-18 ; chapter 31, entire ; 2d Sam- 
uel, chapter 1, entire). 

The Substitute (Le Remplagant) . . . Frangois Copp^e 
(In Modern Short-stories edited by M. Ashmun.) 



THE COURSE OF AMERICAN HISTORY 

WOODROW WILSON 

(In Mere Literature) 

Our national history has been written for the most 
part by New England men. All honor to them ! Their 
scholarship and their characters alike have given them 
an honorable enrollment amongst the great names of 
our literary history ; and no just man would say 
aught to detract, were it never so little, from their 
well-earned fame. They have written our history, 
nevertheless, from but a single point of view. From 
where they sit, the whole of the great development 
looks like an Expansion of New England. Other ele- 
ments but play along the sides of the great process by 
which the Puritan has worked out the development 
of nation and polity. It is he who has gone out and 
possessed the land : the man of destiny, the type and 
impersonation of a chosen people. To the Southern 
writer, too, the story looks much the same, if it be but 
followed to its culmination, — to its final storm and 
stress and tragedy in the great war. It is the history 
of the Suppression of the South. Spite of all her 
splendid contributions to the steadfast accomplish- 
ment of the great task of building the nation ; spite 
of the long leadership of her statesmen in the national 
counsels ; spite of her joint achievements in the con- 
quest and occupation of the West, the South was at 
last turned upon on every hand, rebuked, proscribed, 
defeated. The history of the United States, we have 
learned, was, from the settlement at Jamestown to 



THE COURSE OF AMERICAN HISTORY 253 

the surrender at Appomattox, a long-drawn contest 
for mastery between New England and the South, — 
and the end of the contest we know. All along the 
parallels of latitude ran the rivalry, in those heroical 
days of toil and adventure during which population 
crossed the continent, like an army advancing its en- 
campments. Up and down the great river of the con- 
tinent, too, and beyond, up the slow incline of the 
vast steppes that lift themselves toward the crowning 
towers of the Rockies, — beyond that, again, in the 
gold-fields and upon the green plains of California, 
the race for ascendency struggled on, — till at length 
there was a final coming face to face, and the master- 
ful folk who had come from the loins of New England 
won their consummate victory. 

It is a very dramatic form for the story. One 
almost wishes it were true. How fine a unity it would 
give our epic I But perhaps, after all, the real truth 
is more interesting. The life of the nation cannot be 
reduced to these so simple terms. These two great 
forces, of the North and of the South, unquestionably 
existed, — were unquestionably projected in their 
operation out upon the great plane of the continent, 
there to combine or repel, as circumstances might 
determine. But the people that went out from the 
North were not an unmixed people ; they came from 
the great Middle States as well as from New Eng- 
land. Their transplantation into the West was no 
more a reproduction of New England or New York 
or Pennsylvania or New Jersey than Massachusetts 
was a reproduction of old England, or New Nether- 
land a reproduction of Holland. The Southern people, 
too, whom they met by the western rivers and upon 
the open prairies, were transformed, as they them- 



254 WOODROW WILSON 

selves were, by the rough fortunes of the frontier. A 
mixture of peoples, a modification of mind and habit, 
a new round of experiment and adjustment amidst the 
novel life of the baked and untilled plain, and the far 
valleys with the virgin forests still thick upon them : a 
new temper, a new spirit of adventure, a new impatience 
of restraint, a new license of life, — these are thecharac- 
teristic'notes and measures of the time when the nation 
spread itself at large upon the continent, and was trans- 
formed from a group of colonies into a family of States. 
The passes of these eastern mountains were the 
arteries of the nation's life. The real breath of our 
growth and manhood came into our nostrils when first, 
like Governor Spotswood and that gallant company of 
Virginian gentlemen that rode with him in the far 
year 1716, the Knights of the Order of the Golden 
Horseshoe, our pioneers stood upon the ridges of the 
eastern hills and looked down upon those reaches of 
the continent where lay the untrodden paths of the 
westward migration. There, upon the courses of the 
distant rivers that gleamed before them in the sun, 
down the farther slopes of the hills beyond, out upon 
the broad fields that lay upon the fertile banks of the 
" Father of Waters," up the long tilt of the continent 
to the vast hills that looked out upon the Pacific — 
there were the regions in which, joining with people 
from every race and clime under the sun, they were to 
make the great compounded nation whose liberty and 
mighty works of peace were to cause all the world to 
stand at gaze. Thither were to come Frenchmen, Scan- 
dinavians, Celts, Dutch, Slavs, — men of the Latin 
races and of the races of the Orient, as well as men, a 
great host, of the first stock of the settlements : Eng- 
lish, Scots, Scots-Irish, — like New England men, but 



THE COURSE OF AMERICAN HISTORY 255 

touched with the salt of humor, hard, and yet neigh- 
borly too. For this great process of growth by graft- 
ing, of modification no less than of expansion, the 
colonies, — the original thirteen States, — were only 
preliminary studies and first experiments. But the ex- 
periments that most resembled the great methods by 
which we peopled the continent from side to side and 
knit a single polity across all its length and breadth, 
were surely the experiments made from the very first 
in the Middle States of our Atlantic seaboard. 

Here from the first were mixture of population, 
variety of element, combination of type, as if of the 
nation itself in small. Here was never a simple body, 
a people of but a single blood and extraction, a polity 
and a practice brought straight from one motherland. 
The life of these States was from the beginning like 
the life of the country : they have always shown the 
national pattern. In New England and the South it 
was very different. There some of the great elements 
of the national life were long in preparation : but sep- 
arately and with an individual distinction ; without 
mixture, — for long almost without movement. That 
the elements thus separately prepared were of the 
greatest importance, and run everywhere like chief 
threads of the pattern through all our subsequent life, 
who can doubt? They give color and tone to every 
part of the figure. The very fact that they are so dis- 
tinct and separately evident throughout, the very em- 
phasis of individuality they carry with them, but proves 
their distinct origin. The other elements of our life, 
various though they be, and of the very fibre, giving 
toughness and consistency to the fabric, are merged in 
its texture, united, confused, almost indistinguishable, 
so thoroughly are they mixed, intertwined, interwoven, 



256 WOODROW WILSON 

like the essential strands of the stuff itself : but these 
of the Puritan and the Southerner, though they run 
everywhere with the rest and seem upon a superficial 
view themselves the body of the cloth, in fact modify 
rather than make it. 

What in fact has been the course of American his- 
tory ? How is it to be distinguished from European 
history? What features has it of its own, which give 
it its distinctive plan and movement ? We have suf- 
fered, it is to be feared, a very serious limitation of 
view until recent years by having all our history writ- 
ten in the East. It has smacked strongly of a local 
flavor. It has concerned itself too exclusively with the 
origins and Old- World derivations of our story. Our 
historians have made their march from the sea with 
their heads over shoulder, their gaze always backward 
upon the landing-places and homes of the first settlers. 
In spite of the steady immigration, with its persistent 
tide of foreign blood, they have chosen to speak often 
and to think always of our people as sprung after all 
from a common stock, bearing a family likeness in 
every branch, and following all the while old, familiar, 
family ways. The view is the more misleading because 
it is so large a part of the truth without being all of 
it. The common British stock did first make the coun- 
try, and has always set the pace. There were common 
institutions up and down the coast ; and these had 
formed and hardened for a persistent growth before 
the great westward migration began which was to 
re-shape and modify every element of our life. The 
national government itself was set up and made strong 
by success while yet we lingered for the most part upon 
the eastern coast and feared a too distant frontier. 

But, the beginnings once safely made, change set 



THE COURSE OF AMERICAN HISTORY 257 

in apace. Not only so : there had been slow change 
from the first. We have no frontier now, we are told, 
— except a broken fragment, it may be, here and there 
in some barren corner of the western lands, where 
some inhospitable mountain still shoulders us out, or 
where men are still lacking to break the baked surface 
of the plains and occupy them in the very teeth of 
hostile nature. But at first it was all frontier, — a 
mere strip of settlements stretched precariously upon 
the sea-edge of the wilds : an untouched continent in 
front of them, and behind them an unfrequented sea 
that almost never showed so much as the momentary 
gleam of a sail. Every step in the slow process of set- 
tlement was but a step of the same kind as the first, 
an advance to a new frontier like the old. For long 
we lacked, it is true, that new breed of frontiersmen 
born in after years beyond the mountains. Those first 
frontiersmen had still a touch of the timidity of the 
Old World in their blood : they lacked the frontier 
heaTt. They were " Pilgrims " in very fact, — exiled, 
not at home. Fine courage they had : and a steadfast- 
ness in their bold design which it does a faint-hearted 
age good to look back upon. There was no thought of 
drawing back. Steadily, almost calmly, they extended 
their seats. They built homes, and deemed it certain 
their children would live there after them. But they 
did not love the rough, uneasy life for its own sake. 
How long did they keep, if they could, within sight of 
the sea ! The wilderness was their refuge ; but how long 
before it became their joy and hope ! Here was their 
destiny cast ; but their hearts lingered and held back. 
It was only as generations passed and the work widened 
about them that their thought also changed, and a new 
thrill sped along their blood. Their life had been new 



258 WOODROW WILSON 

and strange from their first landing in the wilderness. 
Their houses, their food, their clothing, their neighbor- 
hood dealings were all such as only the frontier brings. 
Insensibly they were themselves changed. The strange 
life became familiar; their adjustment to it was at 
length unconscious and without effort ; they had no 
plans which were not inseparably a part and a product 
of it. But, until they had turned their backs once for 
all upon the sea ; until they saw their western borders 
cleared of the French ; until the mountain passes had 
grown familiar, and the lands beyond the central and 
constant theme of their hope, the goal and dream of 
their young men, they did not become an American 
people. 

When they did, the great determining movement 
of our history began. The very visages of the people 
changed. That alert movement of the eye, that open- 
ness to every thought of enterprise or adventure, that 
nomadic habit which knows no fixed home and has 
plans ready to be carried any whither, — all the marks 
of the authentic type of the " American " as we know 
him came into our life. The crack of the whip and 
the song of the teamster, the heaving chorus of boat- 
men poling their heavy rafts upon the rivers, the 
laughter of the camp, the sound of bodies of men in 
the still forests, became the characteristic notes in our 
air. A roughened race, embrowned in the sun, hard- 
ened in manner by a coarse life of change and danger, 
loving the rude woods and the crack of the rifle, living 
to begin something new every day, striking with the 
broad and open hand, delicate in nothing but the 
touch of the trigger, leaving cities in its track as if by 
accident rather than design, settling again to the 
steady ways of a fixed life only when it must : such 



THE COURSE OF AMERICAN HISTORY 259 

was the American people whose achievement it was to 
be to take possession of their continent from end to end 
ere their national government was a single century old. 
The picture is a very singular one ! Settled life and 
wild side by side : civilization frayed at the edges, — 
taken forward in rough and ready fashion, with a song 
and a swagger, — not by statesmen, but by woodsmen 
and drovers, with axes and whips and rifles in their 
hands, clad in buckskin, like huntsmen. 

It has been said that we have here repeated some 
of the first processes of history; that the life and 
methods of our frontiersmen take us back to the for- 
tunes and hopes of the men who crossed Europe when 
her forests, too, were still thick upon her. But the dif- 
ference is really very fundamental, and much more 
worthy of remark than the likeness. Those shadowy 
masses of men whom we see moving upon the face of 
the earth in the far-away, questionable days when states 
were forming : even those stalwart figures we see so 
well as they emerge from the deep forests of Germany, 
to displace the Roman in all his western provinces and 
set up the states we know and marvel upon at this 
day, show us men working their new work at their 
own level. They do not turn back a long cycle of 
years from the old and settled states, the ordered 
cities, the tilled fields, and the elaborated govern- 
ments of an ancient civilization, to begin as it were 
once more at the beginning. They carry alike their 
homes and their states with them in the camp and 
upon the ordered march of the host. They are men of 
the forest, or else men hardened always to take the 
sea in open boats. They live no more roughly in 
the new lands than in the old. The world has been 
frontier for them from the first. They may go for- 



260 WOODROW WILSON 

ward with their life in these new seats from where 
they left off in the old. How different the circumstances 
of our first settlement and the building of new states 
on this side the sea ! Englishmen, bred in law and 
ordered government ever since the Norman lawyers 
were followed a long five hundred years ago across 
the narrow seas by those masterful administrators of 
the strong Plantagenet race, leave an ancient realm 
and come into a wilderness where states have never 
been ; leave a land of art and letters, which saw but 
yesterday " the spacious times of great Elizabeth," 
where Shakespeare still lives in the gracious leisure 
of his closing days at Stratford, where cities teem 
with trade and men go bravely dight in cloth of gold, 
and turn back six centuries, — nay, a thousand years 
and more, — to the first work of building states in a 
wilderness ! They bring the steadied habits and so- 
bered thoughts of an ancient realm into the wild air 
of an untouched continent. The weary stretches of a 
vast sea lie, like a full thousand years of time, between 
them and the life in which till now all their thought 
was bred. Here they stand, as it were, with all their 
tools left behind, centuries struck out of their reckon- 
ing, driven back upon the long dormant instincts and 
forgotten craft of their race, not used this long age. 
Look how singular a thing : the work of a primitive 
race, the thought of a civilized ! Hence the strange, 
almost grotesque groupings of thought and affairs in 
that first day of our history. Subtle politicians speak 
the phrases and practice the arts of intricate diplo- 
macy from council chambers placed within log huts 
within a clearing. Men in ruffs and lace and polished 
shoe-buckles thread the lonely glades of primeval 
forests. The microscopical distinctions of the schools, 



THE COURSE OF AMERICAN HISTORY 261 

the thin notes of a metaphysical theology are woven in 
and out through the labyrinths of grave sermons that 
run hours long upon the still air of the wilderness. 
Belief in dim refinements of dogma is made the test 
for man or woman who seeks admission to a company 
of pioneers. When went there by an age since the 
great flood when so singular a thing was seen as this : 
thousands of civilized men suddenly rusticated and 
bade do the work of primitive peoples, — Europe 
frontiered ! 

Of course there was a deep change wrought, if not 
in these men, at any rate in their children ; and every 
generation saw the change deepen. It must seem to 
every thoughtful man a notable thing how, while the 
change was wrought, the simples of things complex 
were revealed in the clear air of the New World : how 
all accidentals seemed to fall away from the structure 
of government, and the simple first principles were 
laid bare that abide always ; how social distinctions 
were stripped off, shown to be the mere cloaks and 
masks they were, and every man brought once again 
to a clear realization of his actual relations to his fel- 
lows! It was as if trained and sophisticated men had 
been rid of a sudden of their sophistication and of all 
the theory of their life, and left with nothing but their 
discipline of faculty, a schooled and sobered instinct. 
And the fact that we kept always, for close upon three 
hundred years, a like element in our life, a frontier 
people always in our van, is, so far, the central and 
determining fact of our national history. " East " and 
" West," an ever-changing line, but an unvarying 
experience and a constant leaven of change working 
always within the body of our folk. Our political, our 
economic, our social life has felt this potent influence 



262 WOODROW WILSON 

from the wild border all our history through. The 
" West " is the great word of our history. The "West- 
erner " has been the type and master of our American 
life. Now at length, as I have said, we have lost our 
frontier ; our front lies almost unbroken along all the 
great coast line of the western sea. The Westerner, 
in some day soon to come, will pass out of our life, as 
he so long ago passed out of the life of the Old World. 
Then a new epoch will open for us. Perhaps it has 
opened already. Slowly we shall grow old, compact 
our people, study the delicate adjustments of an intri- 
cate society, and ponder the niceties, as we have hith- 
erto pondered the bulks and structural framework, 
of government. Have we not, indeed, already come to 
these things? But the past we know. We can " see it 
steady and see it whole " ; and its central movement 
and motive are gross and obvious to the eye. 

Till the first century of the Constitution is rounded 
out we stand all the while in the presence of that 
stupendous westward movement which has filled the 
continent : so vast, so various, at times so tragical, so 
swept by passion. Through all the long time there 
has been a line of rude settlements along our front 
wherein the same tests of power and of institutions 
were still being made that were made first upon the 
sloping banks of the rivers of old Virginia and within 
the long sweep of the Bay of Massachusetts. The new 
life of the West has reacted all the while — who shall 
say how powerfully? — upon the older life of the East ; 
and yet the East has moulded the West as if she sent 
forward to it through every decade of the long process 
the chosen impulses and suggestions of history. The 
West has taken strength, thought, training, selected 
aptitudes out of the old treasures of the East, — as if 



THE COURSE OF AMERICAN HISTORY 263 

out of a new Orient ; while the East has itself been 
kept fresh, vital, alert, originative by the West, her 
blood quickened all the while, her youth through every 
age renewed. Who can say in a word, in a sentence, in 
a voliune, what destinies have been variously wrought, 
with what new examples of growth and energy, while, 
upon this unexampled scale, community has passed 
beyond community across the vast reaches of this great 
continent ! 

NOTES 

Jamestcwn : — A town in Virginia, the site of the first Eng- 
lish settlenaent in America (1607). 

Appomattox : — In 1865 Lee surrendered to Grant at Ap- 
pomattox, Virginia. 

epic : — A long narrative poem recounting in a stirring way 
some great series of events. 

Governor Spotswood ; — Governor of Virginia in the early 
part of the eighteenth century. 

Knights of the Golden Horseshoe : — In 1716 an explor- 
ing expedition under Governor Spotswood made a journey across 
the Blue Ridge. The Governor gave each member of the party 
a gold horeshoe, as a souvenir. 

Celts : — One of the early Aryan races of southwestern 
Europe ; the Welsh and the Highland Scotch are descended from 
the Celts. 

Slavs : — The race of people inhabiting Russia, Poland, Bo- 
hemia, and Servia. 

Latin races: — The French, Spanish, and Italian people, 
whose languages are derived chiefly from the Latin. 

Orient : — The far East — India, China, Japan, etc. 

Norman : — The Norman-French from northern France had 
been in possession of England for the greater part of a century 
(1066-1154) when Henry, son of a Saxon princess and a French 
duke (Geoffrey of Anjou) came to England as Henry II, the 
first of the Plantagenet line of English kings. 

Stratford : — A small town on the Avon River in England ; 
the birthplace of Shakespeare. 

dight: — Clothed. (What does an unabridged dictionary say 



264 WOODROW WILSON 

about this word ? Is it commonly used nowadays ? Was it used 
in Shakespeare's time? Why does the author use it here?) 

see it steady and see it wrhole: — A quotation from the 
works of Matthew Arnold, an English poet and critic. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

What has been the disadvantage of having our history written 
by New England men ? Do you know what particular New 
England men have written of American history ? What state is 
President Wilson from? What is meant by the "Suppression 
of the South " ? Why does the author put in the phrase " we 
have learned " ? Does he believe what he is saying ? Show where 
he makes his own view clear. What " story " is it that one 
" almost wishes " were true ? Went out from the North : Where ? 
How are the Northerners and the Southerners changed after 
they have gone West ? What " new temper " do they have ? 
How do they show their " impatience of restraint " ? What 
eastern mountains are meant here ? How did our nation gaifi 
new life] when the' pioneers looked westward', from the eastern 
ridges? Why are we spoken of as a *' great compounded 
nation " ? What are our " mighty works of peace " ? The author 
now shows how the Middle Seaboard States were a type of the 
later form of the nation, because they had a mixed population. 
What does he think about the influence of the Puritan and the 
Southerner? Note the questions that he asks regarding the course 
of American history. See how he answers them in the pages 
that follow. Why does he say that the first frontiersmen were 
♦' timid " ? When, according to the author, did the " great deter- 
mining movement " of our history begin ? Why does he call the 
picture that he draws a "singular" one? What is meant by 
" civilization frayed at the edges " ? How do the primitive con- 
ditions of our nation differ from the earliest beginnings of the 
European nations ? (See the long passage beginning " How dif- 
ferent.") What is meant by " Europe f rontiered " ? Look care- 
fully on page 261, to see what the author says is " the central 
and determining fact of our national history." What is the 
" great word " of our history ? Has the author answered the 
questions he set for himself on page 256 ? What is happening 
to us as a nation now that we have lost our frontier ? What is the 
relation between the East and the West ? Perhaps you will like 



THE COURSE OF AMERICAN HISTORY 265 

to go on and read some more of this essay, from which we have 
here only a selection. Do you like what the author has said ? 
What do you think of the way in which he has said it ? 

THEME SUBJECTS 

Life in the Wilderness Life on a Western Ranch 

The Log Cabin The Old Settler 

La Salle Some Stories of the Early 

My Friend from the West Days 

My Friend from the East Moving West 

Crossing the Mountains Lewis and Clark 

Early Days in our State The Pioneer 

An Encounter with the Indians The Old Settlers' Picnic 

The Coming of the Railroad " Home-coming Day " in our 

Daniel Boone Town 

A Home on the Praries An Explorer 

Cutting down the Forest My Trip through the West 

The Homesteader (or the East) 

A Frontier Town The President 

SUGGESTIONS FOR W^RITING 

La,Salle: — Look up, in Parkman's La Salle or elsewhere, the 
facts of La Salle's life. Make very brief mention of his life in 
France. Contrast it with his experiences in America. What were 
his reasons for becoming an explorer ? Give an account of one 
of his expeditions: his plans; his preparations; his companions; 
his hardships; his struggles to establish a fort; his return to 
Canada for help ; his failure or success. Perhaps you will want 
to write of his last expedition, and its unfortunate ending. Speak 
of his character as a man and an explorer. Show briefly the re- 
sults of his endeavors. 

Daniel Boone: — Look up the adventures of Daniel Boone, 
and tell some of them in a lively way. Perhaps you can imagine 
his telling them in his own words to a settler or a companion. 
In that case, try to put in the questions and the comments of the 
other person. This will make a kind of dramatic conversation. 

Early Days in our State: — With a few changes, you can 
use the outline given on page 249 for " Early Days iu our County." 



266 WOODROW WILSON 

An Encounter ■with the Indians : — Tell a story that you 
have heard or imagined, about some one's escape from the In- 
dians. How did the hero happen to get into such a perilous sit- 
uation ? Briefly describe his surroundings. Tell of his first knowl- 
edge that the Indians were about to attack him. What did he 
do ? How did he feel ? Describe the Indians. Tell what efforts 
the hero made to get away or to protect himself. Make the ac- 
count of his action brief and lively. Try to keep him before the 
reader all the time. Now and then explain what was going on in 
his mind. This is often a good way to secure suspense. Tell 
very clearly how the hero succeeded in escaping, and what his 
difficulties were in getting away from the spot. Condense the 
account of what took place after his actual escape. W^here did 
he take refuge ? Was he much the worse for his adventure ? 

COLLATERAL READINGS 

The Course of American History 

(in Mere Literature) .... Woodrow Wilson 
The Life of George Washington . " " 
The Winning of the West . . . Theodore Roosevelt 
Stories of the Great West ... " " 
Hero Tales from American His- 
tory Roosevelt and Lodge 

The Great Salt Lake Trail . . Inman and Cody 

The Old Santa F^ Trail . . . H. Inman 

Rocky Mountain Exploration . . Reuben G. Thwaites 

Daniel Boone " " " 

How George Rogers Clark Won 

the Northwest ...... « « «« 

Daniel Boone and the Wilderness 

Road H. A. Bruce 

The Crossing W^inston Churchill 

The Conquest of Arid America . W. E. Smythe 

The Last American Frontier . . F. L. Paxon 

Northwestern Fights and Fighters Cyrus Townsend Brady 

Western Frontier Stories . . . The Century Company 

The Story of Tonty Mary Hartwell Catherwood 

Heroes of the Middle West . . " " " 

Pony Tracks Frederic Remington 

The Different West A. E. Bostwick 



THE COURSE OF AMERICAN HISTORY 267 

The Expedition of Lewis and Clark . . . J. K. Hosmer 

The Trail of Lewis and Clark O. D. Wheeler 

The Discovery of the Old Northwest . . James Baldwin 

Boots and Saddles Elizabeth Custer 

La Salle and the Discovery of the Great 

West Francis Parkman 

The Oregon Trail " " 

Samuel Houston Henry Bruce 

The Story of the Railroad Cy Warman 

The Pioneers Walt Whitman 

The Story of the Cowboy Emerson Hough 

Woodrow Wilson W. B. Hale 

Recollections of Thirteen Presidents . . . John S. Wise 

Presidential Problems Grover Cleveland 

The Story of the White House Esther Singleton 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING 

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 
NINTH WEEK 

I AM more and more impressed with the moral qual- 
ities of vegetables, and contemplate forming a science 
which shall rank with comparative anatomy and com- 
parative philology, — the science of comparative veg- 
etable morality. We live in an age of protoplasm. 
And, if life-matter is essentially the same in all forms 
of life, I purpose to begin early, and ascertain the 
nature of the plants for which I am responsible. I 
will not associate with any vegetable which is disrep- 
utable, or has not some quality that can contribute to 
my moral growth. I do not care to be seen much with 
the squashes or the dead-beets. . . . 

This matter of vegetable rank has not been at all 
studied as it should be. Why do we respect some veg- 
etables, and despise others, when all of them come to 
an equal honor or ignominy on the table? The bean 
is a graceful, confiding, engaging vine ; but you never 
can put beans into poetry, nor into the highest sort 
of prose. There is no dignity in the bean. Corn, 
which in vay garden grows alongside the bean, and, 
so far as I can see, with no affectation of superiority, 
is, however, the child of song. It waves in all litera- 
ture. But mix it with beans, and its high tone is gone. 
Succotash is vulgar. It is the bean in it. The bean is 
a vulgar vegetable, without culture, or any flavor of 
high society among vegetables. Then there is the cool 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING 269 

cucumber, like so many people, — good for nothing 
when it is ripe and the wildness has gone out of it. 
How inferior in quality it is to the melon, which grows 
upon a similar vine, is of a like watery consistency, 
but is not half so valuable ! The cucumber is a sort 
of low comedian in a company where the melon is a 
minor gentleman. I might also contrast the celery with 
the potato. The associations are as opposite as the 
dining-room of the duchess and the cabin of the peas- 
ant. I admire the potato, both in vine and blossom ; 
but it is not aristocratic. I began digging my potatoes, 
by the way, about the 4th of July ; and I fancy I have 
discovered the right way to do it. I treat the potato 
just as I would a cow. I do not pull them up, and 
shake them out, and destroy them ; but I dig carefully 
at the side of the hill, remove the fruit which is grown, 
leaving the vine undisturbed : and my theory is that 
it will go on bearing, and submitting to my exactions, 
until the frost cuts it down. It is a game that one 
would not undertake with a vegetable of tone. 

The lettuce is to me a most interesting study. Let- 
tuce is like conversation : it must be fresh and crisp, 
so sparkling that you scarcely notice the bitter in it. 
Lettuce, like most talkers, is, however, apt to run 
rapidly to seed. Blessed is that sort which comes to 
a head, and so remains, like a few people I know ; 
growing more solid and satisfactory and tender at the 
same time, and whiter at the centre, and crisp in their 
maturity. Lettuce, like conversation, requires a good 
deal of oil, to avoid friction, and keep the company 
smooth ; a pinch of attic salt ; a dash of pepper ; a 
quantity of mustard and vinegar, by all means, but 
so mixed that you will notice no sharp contrasts ; and 
a trifle of sugar. You can put anything, and the more 



270 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 

things the better, into salad, as into a conversation ; 
but everything depends upon the skill of mixing. I 
feel that I am in the best society when I am with let- 
tuce. It is in the select circle of vegetables. The to- 
mato appears well on the table ; but you do not want 
to ask its origin. It is a most agreeable parvenu. Of 
course, I have said nothing about the berries. They 
live in another and more ideal region : except, per- 
haps, the currant. Here we see that, even among ber- 
ries, there are degrees of breeding. The currant is well 
enough, clear as truth, and exquisite in color ; but I 
ask you to notice how far it is from the exclusive 
hauteur of the aristocratic strawberry, and the native 
refinement of the quietly elegant raspberry. 

I do not know that chemistry, searching for pro- 
toplasm, is able to discover the tendency of vege- 
tables. It can only be found out by outward observa- 
tion. I confess that I am suspicious of the bean, for 
instance. There are signs in it of an unregulated life. 
I put up the most attractive sort of poles for my 
Limas. They stand high and straight, like church- 
spires, in my theological garden, — lifted up ; and 
some of them have even budded, like Aaron's rod. 
No church-steeple in a New England village was ever 
better fitted to draw to it the rising generation on 
Sunday than those poles to lift up my beans towards 
heaven. Some of them did run up the sticks seven 
feet, and then straggled off into the air in a wanton 
manner ; but more than half of them went galivant- 
ing off to the neighboring grape-trellis, and wound 
their tendrils with the tendrils of the grape, with a 
disregard of the proprieties of life which is a satire 
upon human nature. And the grape is morally no 
better. I think the ancients, who were not troubled 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING 271 

with the recondite mystery of protoplasm, were right 
in the mythic union of Bacchus and Venus. 

Talk about the Darwinian theory of development 
and the principle of natural selection ! I should like 
to see a garden let to run in accordance with it. If I 
had left my vegetables and weeds to a free fight, in 
which the strongest specimens only should come to 
maturity, and the weaker go to the wall, I can clearly 
see that I should have had a pretty mess of it. It 
would have been a scene of passion and license and 
brutality. The " pusley " would have strangled the 
strawberry ; the upright corn, which has now ears to 
hear the guilty beating of the hearts of the children 
who steal the raspberries, would have been dragged 
to the earth by the wandering bean ; the snake-grass 
would have left the place for the potatoes under 
ground ; and the tomatoes would have been swamped 
by the lusty weeds. With a firm hand, I have had to 
make my own "natural selection." Nothing will so 
well bear watching as a garden except a family of 
children next door. Their power of selection beats 
mine. If they could read half as well as they can steal 
a while away, I should put up a notice, " Children^ he- 
ware! There is Protoplasm here.''^ But I suppose it 
would have no effect. I believe they would eat pro- 
toplasm as quick as anything else, ripe or green. I 
wonder if this is going to be a cholera-year. Con- 
siderable cholera is the only thing that would let my 
apples and pears ripen. Of course I do not care for 
the fruit ; but I do not want to take the responsi- 
bility of letting so much " life-matter," full of crude 
and even wicked vegetable-human tendencies, pass 
into the composition of the neighbors' children, some 
of whom may be as immortal as snake-grass. 



272 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 

There ought to be a public meeting about this, and 
resolutions, and perhaps a clambake. At least, it 
ought to be put into the catechism, and put in strong. 



TENTH WEEK 

I THINK I have discovered the way to keep peas 
from the birds. I tried the scarecrow plan, in a way 
which I thought would outwit the shrewdest bird. 
The brain of the bird is not large ; but it is all con- 
centrated on one object, and that is the attempt to 
elude the devices of modern civilization which injure 
his chances of food. I knew that, if I put up a com- 
plete stuffed man, the bird would detect the imitation 
at once ; the perfection of the thing would show him that 
it was a trick. People always overdo the matter when 
they attempt deception. I therefore hung some loose 
garments, of a bright color, upon a rake-head, and 
set them up among the vines. The supposition was, 
that the bird would think there was an effort to trap 
him, that there was a man behind, holding up these 
garments, and would sing, as he kept at a distance, 
*' You can't catch me with any such double device." 
The bird would know, or think he knew, that I would 
not hang up such a scare, in the expectation that it 
would pass for a man, and deceive a bird ; and he 
would therefore look for a deeper plot. I expected 
to outwit the bird by a duplicity that was simplicity 
itself. I may have over-calculated the sagacity and 
reasoning power of the bird. At any rate, I did over- 
calculate the amount of peas I should gather. 

But my game was only half played. In another part 
of the garden were other peas, growing and blowing. 
To these I took good care not to attract the attention 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING 273 

of the bird by any scarecrow whatever ! I left the old 
scarecrow conspicuously flaunting above the old vines ; 
and by this means I hope to keep the attention of the 
birds confined to that side of the garden. I am con- 
vinced that this is the true use of a scarecrow : it is a 
lure, and not a warning. If you wish to save men from 
any particular vice, set up a tremendous cry of warning 
about some other, and they will all give their special 
efforts to the one to which attention is called. This 
profound truth is about the only thing I have yet real- 
ized out of my pea-vines. 

However, the garden does begin to yield. I know 
of nothing that makes one feel more complacent, in 
these July days, than to have his vegetables from his 
own garden. What an effect it has on the market-man 
and the butcher ! It is a kind of declaration of inde- 
pendence. The market-man shows me his peas and 
beets and tomatoes, and supposes he shall send me out 
some with the meat. " No, I thank you," I say care- 
lessly : " I am raising my own this year." Whereas I 
have been wont to remark, " Your vegetables look a 
little wilted this weather," I now say, " What a fine 
lot of vegetables you 've got ! " When a man is not 
going to buy, he can afford to be generous. To raise 
his own vegetables makes a person feel, somehow, more 
liberal. I think the butcher is touched by the influ- 
ence, and cuts off a better roast for me. The butcher 
is my friend when he sees that I am not wholly de- 
pendent on him. 

It is at home, however, that the effect is most marked, 
though sometimes in a way that I had not expected. 
I have never read of any Roman supper that seemed 
to me equal to a dinner of my own vegetables, when 
everything on the table is the product of my own labor. 



274 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 

except the clams, which I have not been able to raise 
yet, and the chickens, which have withdrawn from 
the garden just when they were most attractive. It is 
strange what a taste you suddenly have for things you 
never liked before. The squash has always been to me 
a dish of contempt ; but I eat it now as if it were my 
best friend. I never cared for the beet or the bean ; 
but I fancy now that [1 could eat them all, tops and 
all, so completely have they been transformed by the 
soil in which they grew. I think the squash is less 
squashy, and the beet has a deeper hue of rose, for my 
care of them. 

I had begun to nurse a good deal of pride in pre- 
siding over a table whereon was the fruit of my honest 
industry. But woman ! — John Stuart Mill is right 
when he says that we do. not know anything about 
women. Six thousand years is as one day with them. 
I thought I had something to do with those vegetables. 

But when I saw Polly seated at her side of the 
table, presiding over the new and susceptible vegeta- 
bles, flanked by the squash and the beans, and smiling 
upon the green corn and the new potatoes, as cool as 
the cucumbers which lay sliced in ice before her, and 
when she began to dispense the fresh dishes, I saw at 
once that the day of my destiny was over. You would 
have thought that she owned all the vegetables, and 
had raised them all from their earliest years. Such 
quiet, vegetable airs ! Such gracious appropriation ! 

At length I said, — 

" Polly, do you know who planted that squash, or 
those squashes ? " 

" James, I suppose." 

" Well, yes, perhaps James did plant them to a cer- 
tain extent. But who hoed them ? " 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING 275 

"We did." 

" We did ! " I said in the most sarcastic manner. 
" And I suppose we put on the sackcloth and ashes, 
when the striped bug came at four o'clock, a.m., and 
we watched the tender leaves, and watered night and 
morning the feeble plants. I tell you, Polly," said I, 
uncorking the Bordeaux raspberry vinegar, " there is 
not a pea here that does not represent a drop of mois- 
ture wrung from my brow, not a beet that does not 
stand for a backache, not a squash that has not caused 
me untold anxiety, and I did hope — but I will say 
no more." 

Observation. — In this sort of family discussion, " I 
will say no more " is the most effective thing you can 
close up with. 

I am not an alarmist. I hope I am as cool as any- 
body this hot summer. But I am quite ready Ao say to 
Polly or any other woman, " You can have the ballot ; 
only leave me the vegetables, or, what is more im- 
portant, the consciousness of power in vegetables." I 
see how it is. Woman is now supreme in the house. 
She already stretches out her hand to grasp the garden. 
She will gradually control everything. Woman is one 
of the ablest and most cunning creatures who have 
ever mingled in human affairs. I understand those 
women who say they don't want the ballot. They pur- 
pose to hold the real power while we go through the 
mockery of making laws. They want the power with- 
out the responsibility. (Suppose my squash had not 
come up, or my beans — as they threatened at one 
time — had gone the wrong way : where would I have 
been ?) We are to be held to all the responsibilities. 
Woman takes the lead in all the departments, leaving 
us politics only. And what is politics ? Let me raise 



276 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 

the vegetables of a nation, says Polly, and I care not 
who makes its politics. Here I sat at the table, armed 
with the ballot, but really powerless among my own 
vegetables. While we are being amused by the ballot, 
woman is quietly taking things into her own hands. 

NOTES 

comparative philology : — The comparison of words from 
different languages, for the purpose of seeing what relationships 
can be found. 

protoplasm : — "The physical basis of life "; the substance 
which passes life on from one vegetable or animal to another. 

attic salt : — The delicate wit of the Athenians, who lived 
in the state of Attica, in Greece. 

parvenu : — A French word meaning an upstart who tries to 
force himself into good society. 

Aaron's rod : — See Numbers, 17 : 1-10. 

Bacchus and Venus : — Bacchus was the Greek god of 
wine; Venus was the Greek goddess of love. 

Darwinian theory : — Charles R. Darwin (1809-1882) was 
a great English scientist who proved that the higher forms of 
life have developed from the lower. 

natural selection : — One of Darwin's theories, to the effect 
that nature weeds out the weak and unfit, leaving the others to 
continue the species; the result is called "the survival of the 
fittest." 

steal a -while aw^ay : — A quotation from a well known 
hymn beginning, — 

I love to steal a while away 
Prom every cumbering care. 

It was written in 1829, by Deodatus Dutton. 

Roman supper : — The Romans were noted for the extrav- 
agance of their evening meals, at which all sorts of delicacies 
were served. 

John Stuart Mill : — An English philosopher (1806-1873). 
He wrote about theories of government. 

Polly : — The author's wife. 

the day of my destiny : — A quotation from Lord Byron's 
poem, Stanzas to Augusta [his sister]. The lines run : — 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING 277 

Though the day of my destiny's over, 
And the star of my fate hath declined, 

Thy soft heart refused to discover 
The faults that so many could find. 

sack-cloth and ashes : — In old Jewish times, a sign of 
grief or mourning. See Esther, 4:1; Isaiah, 58 : 5. 

Bordeaux:: — A province in France noted for its wine. 

QUESTIONS FOR STUDY 

The author is writing of the ninth and tenth weeks of his 
work; he now has time to stop and moralize about his garden. 
Do not take what he says too seriously; look for the fun in it. 
Is he in earnest about the moral qualities of vegetables ? Why 
cannot the bean figure in poetry and romance ? Can you name 
any prose or verse in which corn does ? Explain what is said 
about the resemblance of some people to cucumbers. Why is 
celery more aristocratic than potato ? Is " them " the right word 
in the sentence : " I do not pull them up " ? Explain what is 
meant by the paragraph on salads. Why is the tomato a "par- 
venu " ? Does the author wish to cast a slur on the Darwinian 
theory ? Is it true that moral character is influenced by what one 
eats ? What is the catechism ? What do you think of the author's 
theories about scarecrows ? About " saving men from any par- 
ticular vice " ? Why does raising one's own vegetables make one 
feel generous ? How does the author pass from vegetables to 
woman suffrage ? Is he in earnest in what he says ? What does 
one get out of a selection like this ? 

THEME SUBJECTS 

My Summer on a Farm School Gardens 

A Garden on the Roof A Window-box Garden 

The Truck Garden Some Weeds of our Vicinity 
My First Attempt at Garden- The Scarecrow 

ing Going to Market 

Raspberrying " Votes for Women " 

Planting Time How Women Rule 

The Watermelon Patch A Suffrage Meeting 

Weeding the Garden Why I Believe [or do not Be- 
Visiting in the Country lieve] in Woman's Suffrage 

Getting Rid of the Insects The " Militants " 



278 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 



SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING 

My First Attempt at Gardening : — Tell how you came to 
make the garden. Was there any talk about it before it was be- 
gun ? What were your plans concerning it ? Did you spend any 
time in consulting seed catalogues ? Tell about buying (or other 
wise securing) the seeds. If you got them from some more ex- 
perienced gardener than yourself, report the talk about them. 
Tell how you made the ground ready; how you planted the 
seeds. Take the reader into your confidence as to your hopes and 
uncertainties when the sprouts began to appear. Did the gar- 
den suffer any misfortunes from the frost, or the drought, or 
the depredations of the hens ? Can you remember any conver- 
sation about it ? Tell about the weeding, and what was said when 
it became necessary. Trace the progress of the garden; tell of 
its success or failure as time went on. What did you do with the 
products ? Did any one praise or make fun of you ? How did 
you feel ? Did you want to have another garden ? 

The Scarecrow : — You might speak first about the garden 
— its prosperity and beauty, and the fruit or vegetables that it 
was producing. Then speak about the birds, and tell how they 
acted and what they did. Did you try driving them away ? 
What was said about them ? Now tell about the plans for the 
scarecrow. Give an account of how it was set up, and what 
clothes were put on it. How did it look ? What was said about 
it ? Give one or two incidents (real or imaginary) in which it 
was concerned. Was it of any use ? How long did it remain in 
its place ? 

Votes for Women : — There are several ways in which you 
could deal with this subject ; — 

(a) If you have seen a suffrage parade, you might describe it 
and tell how it impressed you. (b) Perhaps you could write of 
some particular person who was interested in votes for women : 
How did she [or he] look, and what did she say ? (c) Report 
a lecture on suffrage, (c?) Give two or three arguments for or 
against woman's suffrage; do not try to take up too many, but 
deal with each rather completely, (e) Imagine two people talk- 
ing together about suffrage — for instance, two old men; a man 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING 279 

and a woman; a young woman and an old one; a child and a 
grown person ; two children. (/) Imagine the author of the se- 
lection and his wife Polly talking about suffrage at the dinner 
table. 

COLLATERAL READINGS 

My Summer in a Garden .... Charles Dudley Warner 

Being a Boy " " 

In the Wilderness " " 

My Winter on the Nile " « 

On Horseback " " 

Back-log Studies " " 

A Journey to Nature A. C. Wheeler 

The Making of a Country Home . . " " 

A Self-supporting Home .... Kate V. St. Maur 

Folks back Home Eugene Wood 

Adventures in Contentment . . . David Grayson 

Adventures in Friendship .... " " 

The Friendly Road " " 

New Lives for Old William Carleton 

A Living without a Boss .... Anonymous 

The Fat of the Land J. W. Streeter 

The Jonathan Papers Elizabeth Woodbridge 

Adopting an Abandoned Farm . . Kate Sanborn 

Out-door Studies T. W. Higginson 

The Women of America .... Elizabeth McCracken 

The Country Home E. P. Powell 

Blessing the Cornfields (in Hia- 
watha) H. W. Longfellow 

The Corn Song (in The Huskers) . J. G. Whittier 
Charles Dudley Warner (in Ameri- 
can Writers of To-day, pp. 89-103) H. C. Vedder 



THE SINGING MAN 

BY JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY 



He sang above the vineyards of the world. 

And after him the vines with woven hands 
Clambered and clung, and everywhere unfurled 

Triumphing green above the barren lands ; 
Till high as gardens grow, he climbed, he stood, 
Sun-crowned with life and strength, and singing 
toil. 
And looked upon his work ; and it was good : 
The corn, the wine, the oil. 

He sang above the noon. The topmost cleft 

That grudged him footing on the mountain scars 

He planted and despaired not ; till he left 
His vines soft breathing to the host of stars. 

He wrought, he tilled ; and even as he sang, 
The creatures of his planting laughed to scorn 

The ancient threat of deserts where there sprang 
The wine, the oil, the corn! 

He sang not for abundance. — Over-lords 
Took of his tilth. Yet was there still to reap, 

The portion of his labor ; dear rewards 

Of sunlit day, and bread, and human sleep. 

He sang for strength ; for glory of the light. 

He dreamed above the furrows, ' They are mine ! ' 

When all he wrought stood fair before his sight 
With corn, and oil, and wine. 



THE SINGING MAN 281 

Truly ^ the light is sweet 
Yea, and a pleasant thing 
It is to see the Sun. 
And that a man should eat 

His hread that he hath won ; — 
(/So is it sung and said}, 

That he should take and keep, 
After his laboring. 
The portion of his labor in his bread. 
His bread that he hath won ; 
Yea, and in quiet sleep. 
When all is done. 

He sang ; above the burden and the heat, 
Above all seasons with their fitful grace ; 

Above the chance and change that led his feet 
To this last ambush of the Market-place. 

* Enough for him,' they said — and still they say — ■. 
' A crust, with air to breathe, and sun to shine ; 

He asks no more ! ' — Before they took away 
The corn, the oil, the wine. 

He sang. No more he sings now, anywhere. 

Light was enough, before he was undone. 
They knew it well, who took away the air, 

— Who took away the sun ; 
Who took, to serve their soul-devouring greed, 

Himself, his breath, his bread — the goad of toil ; — 
Who have and hold, before the eyes of Need, 
The corn, the wine, — the oil ! 

Truly, one thing is sweet 
Of things beneath the Sun; 



282 JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY 

This, that a man should earn his hread and eat^ 
Rejoicing in his work which he hath done. 
What shall he sung or said 

Of desolate deceit. 
When others take his hread ; 
His and his childreris hread f — 
And the laborer hath none. 
This, for his portion now, of all that he hath done. 
He earns ; and others eat. 
He starves ; — they sit at meat 
Who have taken away the Sun. 



II 

Seek him now, that singing Man. 
Look for him, 
Look for him 
In the mills, 
In the mines ; 

Where the very daylight pines, — 
He, who once did walk the hills ! 
You shall find him, if you scan 
Shapes all unbefitting Man, 
Bodies warped, and faces dim. 
In the mines ; in the mills 
Where the ceaseless thunder fills 
Spaces of the human brain 
Till all thought is turned to pain. 
Where the skirl of wheel on wheel, 
Grinding him who is their tool, 
Makes the shattered senses reel 
To the numbness of the fool. 
Perisht thought, and halting tongue 
(Once it spoke ; — once it sung ! ) 



THE SINGING MAN 283 

Live to hunger, dead to song. 
Only heart-beats loud with wrong 
Hammer on, — How long f 
, . . How long f — Sow long ? 

Search for him ; 

Search for him ; 

Where the crazy atoms swim 

Up the fiery furnace-blast. 

You shall find him, at the last, — 

He whose forehead braved the sun, — 

Wreckt and tortured and undone. 

Where no breath across the heat 

Whispers him that life was sweet ; 

But the sparkles mock and flare, 

Scattering up the crooked air. 

(Blackened with that bitter mirk, — 

Would God know His handiwork ?) 

Thought is not for such as he ; 
Naught but strength, and misery; 
Since, for just the bite and sup, 
Life must needs be swallowed up. 
Only, reeling up the sky, 
Hurtling flames that hurry by. 
Gasp and flare, with WTiy — Why, 
. . . Why?. . . 

Why the human mind of him 
Shrinks, and falters and is dim 
When he tries to make it out : 
What the torture is about. — 
Why he breathes, a fugitive 
Whom the World forbids to live. 



284 JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY 

Why he earned for his abode, 
Habitation of the toad ! 
Why his fevered day by day 
Will not serve to drive away 
Horror that must always haunt : — 
. . . Want . . . Want ! 
Nightmare shot with waking pangs ; — 
Tightening coil, and certain fangs, 
Close and closer, always nigh . . . 
. . . Why? . . . Whtj? 

Why he labors under ban 
That denies him for a man. 
Why his utmost drop of blood 
Buys for him no human good; 
Why his utmost urge of strength 
Only lets Them starve at length ; — 
Will not let him starve alone ; 
He must watch, and see his own 
Fade and fail, and starve, and die. 

. . . Why? . . . Whyf 

Heart-beats, in a hammering song, 

Heavy as an ox may plod. 

Goaded — goaded — faint with wrong, 

Cry unto some ghost of God 

... How long f . . . How long f 

. . o Sow long? 



Ill 

Seek him yet. Search for him ! 
You shall find him, spent and grim ; 



THE SINGING MAN 285 

In the prisons, where we pen 
These unsightly shards of men. 
Sheltered fast ; 
Housed at length ; 
Clothed and fed, no matter how ! — 
Where the householders, aghast, 
Measure in his broken strength 
Nought but power for evil, now. 
Beast-of-burden drudgeries 
Could not earn him what was his : 
He who heard the world applaud 
Glories seized by force and fraud, 
He must break, — he must take ! — 
Both for hate and hunger's sake. 
He must seize by fraud and force ; 
He must strike, without remorse ! 
Seize he might ; but never keep. 
Strike, his once ! — Behold him here. 
(Human life we buy so cheap. 
Who should know we held it dear ?) 

No denial, — no defence 

From a brain bereft of sense, 

Any more than penitence. 

But the heart-beats now, that plod 

Goaded — goaded — dumb with wrong. 

Ask not even a ghost of God 

How long ? 

When the Sea gives up its dead. 
Prison caverns, yield instead 
This, rejected and despised ; 
This, the Soiled and Sacrificed ! 



286 JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY 

Without form or comeliness ; 
Shamed for us that did transgress ; 
Bruised^ for our iniquities^ 
With the stripes that are all his f 
Face that wrechage, you who can. 
It was once the Singing Man. 

IV 

Must it be ? — Must we then 
Kender back to God again 
This His broken work, this thing, 
For His man that once did sing? 
Will not all our wonders do ? 
Gifts we stored the ages through, 
(Trusting that He had forgot) — 
Gifts the Lord required not ? 

Would the all-but-human serve! 
Monsters made of stone and nerve ; 
Towers to threaten and defy 
Curse or blessing of the sky ; 
Shafts that blot the stars with smoke ; 
Lightnings harnessed under yoke ; 
Sea-things, air-things, wrought with steel, 
That may smite, and fly, and feel ! 
Oceans calling each to each ; 
Hostile hearts, with kindred speech. 
Every work that Titans can ; 
Every marvel : save a man, 
Who might rule without a sword. — 
Is a man more precious, Lord? 

Can it be ? — Must we then 
Render back to Thee again 



THE SINGING MAN 287 

Million, million wasted men ? 
Men, of flickering human breath, 
Only made for life and death? 

Ah, but see the sovereign Few, 
Highly favored, that remain ! 
These, the glorious residue. 
Of the cherished race of Cain. 
These, the magnates of the age, 
High above the human wage. 
Who have numbered and possesst 
All the portion of the rest! 

What are all despairs and shames. 
What the mean, forgotten names 
Of the thousand more or less. 
For one surfeit of success ? 

For those dullest lives we spent, 
Take these Few magnificent ! 
For that host of blotted ones. 
Take these glittering central suns. 
Few; — but how their lustre thrives 
On the million broken lives ! 
Splendid, over dark and doubt. 
For a million souls gone out ! 
These, the holders of our hoard, — 

Wilt thou not accept them. Lord ? 



Oh, in the wakening thunders of the heart, 
— The small lost Eden, troubled through the 
night, 



288 JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY 

Sounds there not now, — f orboded and apart, 
Some voice and sword of light? 

Some voice and portent of a dawn to break ? — 
Searching like God, the ruinous human shard 

Of that lost Brother-man Himself did make, 
And Man himself hath marred ? 

It sounds ! — And may the anguish of that birth 
Seize on the world ; and may all shelters fail, 
Till we behold new Heaven and new Earth 

Through the rent Temple-vail ! 
When the high-tides that threaten near and far 

To sweep away our guilt before the sky, — 
Flooding the waste of this dishonored Star, 
Cleanse, and o'ewhelm, and cry ! 

Cry, from the deep of world-accusing waves. 

With longing more than all since Light began. 
Above the nations, — underneath the graves, — 
' Give back the Singing Man ! ' 



NOTES 

and it was good : — Genesis, 1 : 31 : " And God saw all that 
he had mads, and, behold, it was very good." 

the ancient threat of deserts : — Isaiah, 35 : 1-2 : " The 
desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose." 

after his laboring : — Luke, 10 : 7, and 1st Timothy, 5 : 18 : 
" The laborer is worthy of his hire." 

portion of his labor : — Ecclesiastes, 2 : 10 : " For my heart 
rejoiced in my labor ; and this was my portion of all my labor." 

the light is sweet : — Ecclesiastes, 11 : 7 : " Truly the light 
is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun." 

How long: — Revelation, 6 : 10 : "How long, O Lord, holy 
and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them 
that dwell on the earth ? " 



THE SINGING MAN 289 

•when the sea : — Revelation, 20 : 13 : " And the sea gave 
up the dead which were in it." 

rejected and despised: — For this and the remainder of 
the stanza, see Isaiah, 53. 

Titans : — In Greek mythology, powerful and troublesome 
giants. 

Cain : — See the story of Cain, Genesis, 4 : 2-16. 

searching like God : — Genesis, 4:9: " And the Lord said 
unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother ? And he said, I know 
not ! Am I my brother's keeper ? " 

Temple-vail : — At the death of Christ, the vail of the tem- 
ple was rent ; see Matthew, 27:51. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY i 

Read the poem slowly and thoughtfully. The " singing man " 
is the laborer who, in days gone by, was happy in his work. 
People were not crowded into great cities, and there was more 
simple out-door labor than there is now, and less strife for 
wealth 

Ahove the vineyards : In Europe, vineyards are often planted 
on the slopes of hills and mountains. What ancient country do 
you think of in connection with " the corn [grain], the oil, the 
wine " ? Were the laborers happy in that country ? What were 
the " creatures " of man's planting (second stanza)? What was 
the " ancient threat " of deserts? Of what kind of deserts, as 
described here ? Of what deserts would this be true after the rainy 
season? Laughed to scorn : Does this mean " outdid " ? Mentally 
insert the word something after still in the second line of the third 
stanza. If the laborer in times gone by did not sing for abun- 
dance, what did he sing for (stanza three) ? The verses in italics 
are a kind of refrain, as if the laborer were singing to himself. 
So is it said and sung refers to the fact that these lines are 
adapted from passages in the Bible. This last ambush : What 
does the author mean here by suggesting that the laborer has 
been entrapped? Who are " they" in the line " ' Enough for 
him,' they said " ? How did they take away " the corn, the oil, 
the wine " ? How did they take away " the air and the sun " ? 

1 To THE Teacher : It will probably be better for the pupils to 
study this poem in class than to begin it by themselves. 



290 JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY 

Who now has the product of the workman's toil ? What are " the 
eyes of Need " ? Is it true that one may work hard and still be in 
need ? If it is true, who is to blame ? What are " dim " faces ? 
Why does the author begin the word Man with a capital ? What 
effect does too much hard work have upon the laborer ? What 
is " the crooked air " ? Who is represented as saying Why ? 
How does the world forbid the laborer to live ? Why are there 
dotted lines before and after Why and What and How long f 
Who are meant by Them in the line beginning ".Only lets " ? 
Why does the author say that the prisons are filled with ill- 
used laborers ? What does she mean by saying that the prison- 
ers are " bruised for our iniquities " ? What is gained here by 
using the language of the Bible ? The all-but-human means 
" almost intelligent " — referring to machinery. Does the author 
mean to praise the " sovereign Few " ? Who are these " Few 
magnificent " ? Are they really to blame for the sufferings of 
the poor ? Himself in the line beginning " Of that lost," refers 
to God. What is meant here by " a new Heaven and a new 
Earth"? What is " this dishonored Star"? What conditions 
does the author think will bring back the singing man ? Are 
they possible conditions ? 

Re-read the poem, thinking of the author's protest against the 
sufferings of the poor and the selfishness of the rich. What do 
you think of the poem ? 

COLLATERAL READINGS 

The Singing Man and Other Poems Josephine Preston Peabody 

The Piper 

The Singing Leaves . . . 
Fortune and Men's Eyes . , 
The Wolf of Gubbio . . . 
The Man with the Hoe .... Edwin Markham 



THE DANCE OF THE BON-ODORI 

LAFCADIO HEARN 

(From Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Volume I, Chapter VI) 

I 

At last, from the verge of an enormous ridge, the 
roadway suddenly slopes down into a vista of high 
peaked roofs of thatch and green-mossed eaves — into 
a village like a colored print out of old Hiroshige's 
picture-books, a village with all its tints and colors 
precisely like the tints and colors of the landscape in 
which it lies. This is Kami-Ichi, in the land of Hoki. 

We halt before a quiet, dingy little inn, whose host, 
a very aged man, comes forth to salute me ; while a 
silent, gentle crowd of villagers, mostly children and 
women, gather about the kuruma to see the stranger, 
to wonder at him, even to touch his clothes with timid 
smiling curiosity. One glance at the face of the old 
inn-keeper decides me to accept his invitation. I must 
remain here until to-morrow : my runners are too 
wearied to go farther to-night. 

Weather-worn as the little inn seemed without, it 
is delightful within. Its polished stairway and bal- 
conies are speckless, reflecting like mirror-surfaces 
the bare feet of the maid-servants ; its luminous rooms 
are fresh and sweet-smelling as when their soft mat- 
tings were first laid down. The carven pillars of the 
alcove (toko) in my chamber, leaves and flowers chis- 
eled in some black rich wood, are wonders ; and the 
kakemono or scroll-picture hanging there is an idyl, 
Hotei, God of Happiness, drifting in a bark down 



292 LAFCADIO HEARN 

some shadowy stream into evening mysteries of vapory 
purple. Far as this hamlet is from all art-centres, 
there is no object visible in the house which does not 
reveal the Japanese sense of beauty in form. The old 
gold-flowered lacquer-ware, the astonishing box in 
which sweetmeats (kwashi) are kept, the diaphanous 
porcelain wine-cups dashed with a single tiny gold 
figure of a leaping shrimp, the tea-cup holders which 
are curled lotus- leaves of bronze, even the iron kettle 
with its figurings of dragons and clouds, and the 
brazen hibachi whose handles are heads of Buddhist 
lions, delight the eye and surprise the fancy. Indeed, 
wherever to-day in Japan one sees something totally 
uninteresting in porcelain or metal, something com- 
monplace and ugly, one may be almost sure that de- 
testable something has been shaped under foreign in- 
fluence. But here I am in ancient Japan ; probably no 
European eyes ever looked upon these things before. 

A window shaped like a heart peeps out upon the 
garden, a wonderful little garden with a tiny pond 
and miniature bridges and dwarf trees, like the land- 
scape of a tea-cup ; also some shapely stones of course, 
and some graceful stone lanterns, or toro, such as are 
placed in the courts of temples. And beyond these, 
through the warm dusk, I see lights, colored lights, 
the lanterns of the Bonku, suspended before each 
home to welcome the coming of beloved ghosts ; for 
by the antique calendar, according to which in this 
antique place the reckoning of time is still made, this 
is the first night of the Festival of the Dead. 

As in all other little country villages where I have 
been stopping, I find the people here kind to me with 
a kindness and a courtesy unimaginable, indescribable, 
unknown in any other country, and even in Japan 



THE DANCE OF THE BON-ODORI 293 

itself only in the interior. Their simple politeness is 
not an art ; their goodness is absolutely unconscious 
goodness ; both come straight from the heart. And 
before I have been two hours among these people, 
their treatment of me, coupled with the sense of my 
utter inability to repay such kindness, causes a wicked 
wish to come into my mind. I wish these charming 
folk would do me some unexpected wrong, something 
surprisingly evil, something atrociously unkind, so 
that I should not be obliged to regret them, which 1 
feel sure I must begin to do as soon as I go away. 

"While the aged landlord conducts me to the bath, 
the wife prepares for us a charming little repast of 
rice, eggs, vegetables, and sweetmeats. She is pain- 
fully in doubt about her ability to please me, even 
after I have eaten enough for two men, and apologizes 
too much for not being able to offer me more. 

" There is no fish," she says, "for to-day is the first 
day of the Bonku, the Festival of the Dead ; being 
the thirteenth day of the month. On the thirteenth, 
fourteenth, and fifteenth of the month nobody may 
eat fish. But on the morning of the sixteenth day, the 
fishermen go out to catch fish ; and everybody who 
has both parents living may eat of it. But if one has 
lost one's father or mother then one must not eat fish, 
even upon the sixteenth day." 

While the good soul is thus explaining I become 
aware of a strange remote sound from without, a sound 
I recognize through memory of tropical dances, a meas- 
ured clapping of hands. But this clapping is very soft 
and at long intervals. And at still longer intervals 
there comes to us a heavy mufEed booming, the tap 
of a great drum, a temple drum. 

" Oh ! we must go to see it," cries Akira; "it is the 



294 LAFCADIO HEARN 

Bon-odoil, the Dance o£ the Festival of the Dead. 
And you will see the Bon-odori danced here as it is 
never danced in cities — the Bon-odori of ancient days. 
For customs have not changed here ; but in the cities 
all is changed." 

So I hasten out, wearing only, like the people about 
me, one of those light wide-sleeved summer robes ■ — 
yukata — which are furnished to male guests at all 
Japanese hotels ; but the air is so warm that even 
thus lightly clad, I find myself slightly perspiring. 
And the night is divine, — still, clear, vaster than the 
nights of Europe, with a big white moon flinging 
down queer shadows of tilted eaves and horned gables, 
and delightful silhouettes of robed Japanese. A little 
boy, the grandson of our host, leads the way with a 
crimson paper lantern ; and the sonorous echoing of 
geta, the koro-koro of wooden sandals, fills all the 
street, for many are going whither we are going, to 
see the dance. 

A little while we proceed along the main street ; 
then, traversing a narrow passage between two houses, 
we find ourselves in a great open space flooded by 
moonlight. This is the dancing-place; but the dance 
has ceased for a time. Looking about me, I perceive 
that we are in the court of an ancient Buddhist tem- 
ple. The temple building itself remains intact, a low, 
long peaked silhouette against the starlight ; but it is 
void and dark and unhallowed now ; it has been turned, 
they tell me, into a schoolhouse. The priests are gone ; 
the great bell is gone ; the Buddhas and the Bodhi- 
sattvas have vanished, all save one, — a broken-handed 
Jizo of stone, smiling with eyelids closed, under the 
moon. 

In the centre of the court is a framework of bamboo 



THE DANCE OF THE BON-ODORI 295 

supporting a great drum ; and about it benches have 
been arranged, benches from the schoolhouse, on which 
the villagers are resting. There is a hum of voices, 
voices of people speaking very low, as if expecting 
something solemn ; and cries of children betimes, and 
soft laughter of girls. And far behind the court, be- 
yond a low hedge of sombre evergreen shrubs, I see 
soft white lights and a host of tall gray shapes throw- 
ing long shadows ; and I know that the lights are the 
white lanterns of the dead (those hung in cemeteries 
only), and that the gray shapes are the shapes of 
tombs. 

Suddenly a girl rises from her seat, and taps the 
huge drum once. It is the signal for the Dance of 

Souls. 

II 

Out of the shadow of the temple a professional line 
of dancers files into the moonlight and as suddenly 
halts, — all young women or girls, clad in their choic- 
est attire ; the tallest leads ; her comrades follow in 
order of stature. Little maids of ten or twelve years 
compose the end of the procession. Figures lightly 
poised as birds, — figures that somehow recall the 
dreams of shapes circling about certain antique vases ; 
those charming Japanese robes, close-clinging about 
the knees, might seem, but for the great fantastic 
drooping sleeves, and the curious broad girdles confin- 
ing them, designed after the drawing of some Greek 
or Etruscan artist. And, at another tap of the drum, 
there begins a performance impossible to picture in 
words, something unimaginable, phantasmal, — a 
dance, an astonishment. 

All together glide the right foot forward one pace, 
without lifting the sandal from the ground, and ex- 



296 LAFCADIO HEARN 

tend both hands to the right, with a strange floating 
motion and a smiling, mysterious obeisance. Then the 
right foot is drawn back, with a repetition of the wav- 
ing of hands and the mysterious bow. Then all ad- 
vance the left foot and repeat the previous movements, 
half-turning to the left. Then all take two gliding 
paces forward, with a single simultaneous soft clap of 
the hands, and the first performance is reiterated, al- 
ternately to the right and left ; all the sandaled feet 
gliding together, all the supple hands waving together, 
all the pliant bodies bowing and swaying together. 
And so slowly, weirdly, the processional movement 
changes into a great round, circling about the moon- 
lit court and around the voiceless crowd of spectators. 

And always the white hands sinuously wave to- 
gether, as if weaving spells, alternately without and 
within the round, now with palms upward, now with 
palms downward ; and all the elfish sleeves hover dusk- 
ily together, with a shadowing as of wings ; and all 
the feet poise together with such a rhythm of complex 
motion, that, in watching it, one feels a sensation of 
hypnotism — as while striving to watch a flowing and 
shimmering of water. 

And this soporous allurement is intensified by a 
dead hush. No one speaks, not even a spectator. And, 
in the long intervals between the soft clapping of 
hands, one hears only the shrilling of the crickets in 
the trees, and the shtc-shu of sandals, lightly stirring 
the dust. Unto what, I ask myself, may this be lik- 
ened? Unto nothing; yet it suggests some fancy of 
somnambulism, — dreamers, who dream themselves 
flying, dreaming upon their feet. 

And there comes to me the thought that I am look- 
ing at something immemorially old, something belong- 



THE DANCE OF THE BOX-ODORI 297 

ing to the unrecorded beginning of this Oriental life, 
perhaps to the crepuscular Kamiyo itself, to the mag- 
ical Age of the Gods ; a symbolism of motion whereof 
the meaning has been forgotten for innumerable years. 
Yet more and more unreal the spectacle appears, with 
silent smilings, with its silent bowings, as if obeisance 
to watchers invisible ; and I find myself wondering 
whether, were I to utter but a whisper, all would not 
vanish forever, save the gray mouldering court and 
the desolate temple, and the broken statue of Jizo, 
smiling always the same mysterious smile I see upon 
the faces of the dancers. 

Under the wheeling moon, in the midst of the 
round, I feel as one within the circle of a charm. And 
verily, this is enchantment ; I am bewitched, by the 
ghostly weaving of hands, by the rhythmic gliding of 
feet, above all by the flittering of the marvellous 
sleeves — apparitional, soundless, velvety as a flitting 
of great tropical bats. No ; nothing I ever dreamed 
of could be likened to this. And with the conscious- 
ness of the ancient hakaba behind me, and the weird 
invitation of its lanterns, and the ghostly beliefs of the 
hour and the place, there creeps upon me a nameless, 
tingling sense of being haunted. But no ! these gra- 
cious, silent, waving, weaving shapes are not of the 
Shadowy Folk, for whose coming the white fires were 
kindled : a strain of song, full of sweet, clear quaver- 
ing, like the call of a bird, gushes from some girlish 
mouth, and fifty soft voices join the chant : — 

Sorota soroimasMta odorikoga sorota, 

Soroikita, kita hare yukata. 

" Uniform to view [as ears of young rice ripening 
in the field] all clad alike in summer festal robes, the 
company of dancers have assembled." 



298 LAFCADIO HEARN 

Again only the shrilling of the crickets, the shu-shu 
of feet, the gentle clapping ; and the wavering hover- 
ing measure proceeds in silence, with mesmeric lentor, 
— with a strange grace, which by its very naivety, 
seems as old as the encircling hills. 

Those who sleep the sleep of centuries out there, 
under the gray stones where the white lanterns are, 
and their fathers, and the fathers of their fathers' 
fathers, and the unknown generations behind them, 
buried in cemeteries of which the place has been for- 
gotten for a thousand years, doubtless looked upon a 
scene like this. Nay ! the dust stirred by those young 
feet was human life, and so smiled and so sang under 
this self-same moon, " with woven paces and with wav- 
ing hands." 

Suddenly a deep male chant breaks the hush. Two 
giants have joined the round, and now lead it, two 
superb young mountain peasants nearly nude, tower- 
ing head and shoulders above the whole of the assem- 
bly. Their kimono are rolled about their waists like 
girdles, leaving their bronzed limbs and torsos naked 
to the warm air ; they wear nothing else save their 
immense straw hats, and white tabi, donned expressly 
for the festival. Never before among these people saw 
I such men, such thews ; but their smiling beardless 
faces are comely and kindly as those of Japanese boys. 
They seem brothers, so like in frame, in movement, 
in the timbre of their voices, as they intone the same 

song : — 

No demo yama demo ko wa umiokeyo, 
Sen ryo kura yori ko ga takara. 

" Whether brought forth upon the mountain or in 
the field, it matters nothing : more than a treasure of 
one thousand ryo, a baby precious is." 



THE DANCE OF THE BON-ODORI 299 

And Jizo, the lover of children's ghosts, smiles across 
the silence. 

Souls close to nature's Soul are these; artless and 
touching their thought, like the worship of that Kis- 
hibojin to whom wives pray. And after the silence, the 
sweet thin voices of the women answer : — 

Oomu otoko ni sowa sanu oya wa, 
Oyade gozaranu ko no kataki. 

"The parents who will not allow their girl to be 
united with her lover ; they are not the parents, but 
the enemies of their child." 

And song follows song; and the round ever becomes 
iarger ; and the hours pass unf elt, unheard, while the 
moon wheels slowly down the blue steeps of the night. 

A deep low boom rolls suddenly across the court, 
the rich tone of some temple bell telling the twelfth 
hour. Instantly the witchcraft ends, like the wonder of 
some dream broken by a sound ; the chanting ceases ; 
the round dissolves in an outburst of happy laughter, 
and chatting, and softly-voweled callings of flower- 
names which are names of girls, and farewell cries of 
" Sayonara ! " as dancers and spectators alike betake 
themselves homeward, with a great Tcoro-lcoro of 
getas. 

And I, moving with the throng, in the bewildered 
manner of one suddenly roused from sleep, know my- 
self ungrateful. These silvery-laughing folk who now 
toddle along beside me upon their noisy little clogs, 
stepping very fast to get a peep at my foreign face, 
these but a moment ago were visions of archaic grace, 
illusions of necromancy, delightful phantoms ; and I 
feel a vague resentment against them for thus mate- 
rializing into simple country-girls. 



300 LAFCADIO HEARN 

NOTES 

Laf eadio Hearn, the author of this selection, took a four days' 
journey in a jinrikisha to the remote country district which he 
describes. He is almost the only foreigner who has ever entered 
the village. 

Bon-odori : — The dance in honor of the dead. 

Hiroshige: — A Japanese landscape painter of an early date. 

kuruma : — A jinrikisha ; a two- wheeled cart drawn by a man. 

hibachi : — (hi ba'chi) A brazier. 

Bonku: — The Festival of the Dead. 

The memory of tropical dances : — Laf cadio Hearn had 
previously spent some years in the West Indies, 

Akira: — The name of the guide who has drawn the kuruma 
in which the foreigner has come to the village. (See page 18 of 
Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan.) 

yukata: — Pronounced yu kd'ta. 

geta: — Pronounced gee'ta, not jee'ta; high noisy wooden clogs. 
(See page 10 of Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan.) 

Buddhist: — One who believes in the doctrines of Gautama 
Siddartha, a religious teacher of the sixth century before Christ. 

Buddha: — A statue representing the Buddha Siddartha in a 
very calm position, usually sitting cross-legged. 

Bodhisattvas: — Pronounced bo di saht'vas- gods who have 
almost attained the perfection of Buddha (Gautama Siddartha). 

Jizo: — A Japanese God. See page 297. 

Btruscan: — Relating to Etruria, a division of ancient Italy. 
Etruscan vases have graceful figures upon them. 

soporous: — Drowsy; sleep-producing. 

crepuscular: — Relating to twilight. 

Kamiy o : — The Age of the Gods in Japan. 

hakaba: — Cemetery. 

lentor : — Slowness. 

" ^vith ■woven paces," etc. See Tennyson's Idylls of tlie 
King : " With woven paces nud with waving arms." 

tabi: — White stockings with a division for the great toe. 

ryo: — About fifty cents. 

Kishibojin: — Pronounced kishiho'jin. (See page 96 of 
Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan.) 

Sayonara: — Good-bye. 



THE DANCE OF THE BON-ODORI 301 

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

Read the selection through rather slowly. Do not be alarmed 
at the Japanese names : they are usually pronounced as they 
are spelled. Perhaps your teacher will be able to show you 
a Japanese print ; at least you can see on a Japanese fan 
quaint villages such as are here described. What sort of face 
has the host ? How does this Japanese inn differ from the 
American hotel ? Does there seem to be much furniture ? If 
the Americans had the same sense of beauty that the Japanese 
have, v/hat changes would be made in most houses ? Why does 
the foreign influence make the Japanese manufactures " unin- 
teresting " and " detestable " ? If you have been in a shop 
where Japanese wares are sold, tell what seemed most striking 
about the objects and their decoration. What is meant by " the 
landscape of a tea-cup " ? Why does the author say so much 
about the remoteness of the village ? See how the author uses 
picture-words and sound- words to make his description vivid. 
Note his use of contrasts. Why does he preface his account of 
the dance by the remark that it cannot be described in words ? 
Is this a good method ? How does the author make you feel the 
swing and rhythm of the dance ? Do not try to pronounce the 
Japanese verses : Notice that they are translated. Why are 
the Japanese lines put in at all ? Why does the author say that 
he is ungrateful at the last ? Try to tell in a few sentences what 
are the good qualities of this selection. Make a little list of the 
devices that the author has used in order to make his descrip- 
tions vivid and his narration lively. Can you apply some of his 
methods to a short description of your own ? 



THEME SUBJECTS 

A Flower Festival Children's Games in the Yard 

A Pageant Some Japanese People that I 

The May Fete have Seen 

Dancing out of Doors Japanese Students in our Schools 

A Lawn Social Japanese Furniture 

The Old Settlers' "Picnic An Oriental Store in our Town 

The Russian Dancers My Idea of Japan 

A Moonlight Picnic Japanese Pictures 



302 LAFCADIO HEARN 

A Street Carnival Why We have Ugly Things in 

An Old-fashioned Square our Houses 

Dance Do we have too much Furniture 

The Revival of Folk-Dancing in our Houses ? 

The Girls' Drill What we can Learn from the 

A Walk in the Village at Night Japanese 

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING 

An Evening "Walk in the Village : — Imagine yourself 
taking a walk through the village at nightfall. Tell of the time 
of day, the season, and the weather. Make your reader feel the 
approach of darkness, and the heat, or the coolness, or the chill 
of the air. What signs do you see about you, of the close of 
day ? Can you make the reader feel the contrast of the lights 
and the surrounding darkness ? As you walk along, what sounds 
do you hear ? What activities are going on ? Can you catch any 
glimpses, through the windows, of the family life inside the 
houses ? Do you see people eating or drinking ? Do you see 
any children ? Are the scenes about you quiet and restful, 
or are they confused and irritating ? Make use of any incidents 
that you can to complete your description of the village as you 
see it in your walk. Perhaps you will wish to close your theme 
with your entering a house, or your advance into the dark open 
country beyond the village. 

My Idea of Japan : — Suppose that you were suddenly trans- 
ported to a small town in Japan : What would be your first im- 
pression ? Tell what you would expect to see. Speak of the 
houses, the gardens, and the temples. Tell about the shops, and 
booths, and the wares that are for sale. Describe the dress and 
appearance of the Japanese men ; of the women ; the children. 
Speak of the coolies, or working-people ; the foreigners. Per- 
haps you can imagine yourself taking a ride in a, Jinrikisha. Tell 
of the amusing or extraordinary things that you see, and make 
use of incidents and conversation. Bring out the contrasts be- 
tween Japan and your own country. 

A Dance or Drill : — Think of some drill or dance or compli- 
cated game that you have seen, which lends itself to the kind of 
description in the selection. In your work, try to emphasize the 



THE DANCE OF THE BON-ODORI 303 

contrast between the background and the moving figures ; the 
eflPects of light and darkness ; the sound of music and voices ; 
the sway and rhythm of the action. Re-read parts of The Dance 
of the Bon-odori, to see what devices the author has used in 
order to bring out effects of sound and rhythm. 



COLLATERAL READINGS 

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan . Lafcadio Hearn 

Out of the East " " 

Kokoro " « 

Kwaidan " " 

A Japanese Miscellany .... " " 
Two Years in the French West 

Indies " " 

Japanese Life in Town and Coun- 
try G. W. Knox 

Our Neighbors the Japanese . . J. K. Goodrich 

When I Was Young Yoshio Markino 

Miss John Bull " « 

When I Was a Boy in Japan . . Sakae Shioya 

Japanese Girls and Women . . . Alice M, Bacon 

A Japanese Interior " " 

Japonica Sir Edwin Arnold 

Japan W. E. Griffis 

Human Bullets Tadayoshy Sukurai 

The Story of Japan R. Van Bergen 

A Boy in Old Japan " " 

Letters from Japan Mrs. Hugh Frazer 

Unbeaten Tracks in Japan . . . Isabella Bird (Bishop) 

The Lady of the Decoration . . Frances Little 

Little Sister Snow " « 

Japan in Pictures Douglas Sladen 

Old and New Japan (good illus- 
trations in color). ..... Clive Holland 

Nogi Stanley Washburn 

Japan, the Eastern Wonderland . D. C. Angus 

Peeps at Many Lands : Japan . . John Finnemore 

Japan Described by Great Writers Esther Singleton 

The Flower of Old Japan [verse] . Alfred Noyes 

Dancing and Dancers of To-day . Caroline and Chas. H. Coffin 



304 LAFCADIO HEARN 

The Healthful Art of Dancing . L. H. Gulick 

The Festival Book J. E. 'C. Lincoln 

Folk Dances Caroline Crawford 

Lafcadio Hearn Nina H. Kennard 

Lafcadio Hearn (Portrait) . . Edward Thomas 
The Life and Letters of Lafcadio 

Hearn Elizabeth Bisland 

The Japanese Letters of Lafca- 
dio Hearn " " 

Lafcadio Hearn in Japan . . . Yone Noguehi 

Lafcadio Hearn (Portraits) . Current Literature 42 : 50 



LETTERS 

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH TO WILLIAM DEAN 
HOWELLS 

PoNKAPOG, Mass., Dec. 13, 1875. 
Dear Howells, — We had so charming a visit at 
your house that I have about made up my mind to 
reside with you permanently. I am tired of writing. 
I would like to settle down in just such a comfortable 
home as yours, with a man who can work regularly 
four or five hours a day, thereby relieving one of all 
painful apprehensions in respect to clothes and pocket- 
money. I am easy to get along with. I have few un- 
reasonable wants and never complain when they are 
constantly supplied. I think I could depend on you. 
Ever yours, 

T. B. A. 

P. S. — I should want to bring my two mothers, my 
two boys (I seem to have everything in twos), my 
wife, and her sister. 



THt)MAS BAILEY ALDRICH TO E. S. MORSE 

Dear Mr. Morse: 

It was very pleasant to me to get a letter from you 
the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleas- 
anter if I had been able to decipher it. I don't think 
that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I 
knew) and the signature (at which I guessed). 



306 WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

There 's a singular and perpetual charm in a letter 
of yours — it never grows old ; it never loses its 
novelty. One can say to one's self every morning : 
" There 's that letter of Morse's. I have n't read it yet. 
I think I '11 take another shy at it to-day, and maybe 
I shall be able in the course of a few days to make 
out what he means by those t's that look like w's, and 
those i's that have n't any eyebrows." 

Other letters are read, and thrown away, and for- 
gotten ; but yours are kept forever — unread. One of 
them will last a reasonable man a lifetime. 
Admiringly yours, 

T. B. Aldrich. 



WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY TO JOSEPHINE 
PRESTON PEABODY 

The Quadrangle Club, 

Chicago, September 30, '99. 

Your generous praise makes me rather shamefaced : 
you ought to keep it for something that counts. At 
least other people ought : you would find a bright ring- 
ing word, and the proportion of things would be kept. 
As for me, I am doing my best to keep the proportion 
of things, in the midst of no-standards and a dreary 
dingy fog-expanse of darkened counsel. Bah ! here I 
am whining in my third sentence, and the purpose of 
this note was not to whine, but to thank you for heart 
new-taken. I take the friendly words (for I need them 
cruelly) and forget the inadequate occasion of them. 
I am looking forward with almost feverish pleasure 
to the new year, when I shall be among friendships 
which time and absence and half-estrangements have 
only made to shine with a more inward light ; and when, 



LETTERS 307 

so accompanied, I can make shift to think and live a 
little. Do not wait till then to say Welcome. 

W. V. M. 



BBET HARTE TO HIS WIFE 

Laweence, Kansas, 

October 24, 1873. 

My dear Anna, — 

I left Topeka — which sounds like a name Franky 
might have invented — early yesterday morning, but 
did not reach Atchison, only sixty miles distant, until 
seven o'clock at night — an hour before the lecture. 
The engine as usual had broken down, and left me at 
four o'clock fifteen miles from Atchison, on the edge 
of a bleak prairie with only one house in sight. But I 
got a saddle-horse — there was no vehicle to be had — 
and strapping my lecture and blanket to my back I gave 
my valise to a little yellow boy — who looked like a 
dirty terra-cotta figure — with orders to follow me on 
another horse, and so tore off towards Atchison. I 
got there in time ; the boy reached there two hours 
after. 

I make no comment ; you can imagine the half-sick, 
utterly disgusted man who glared at that audience 
over his desk that night. . . . And yet it was a good 
audience, thoroughly refined and appreciative, and very 
glad to see me. I was very anxious about this lecture, 
for it was a venture of my own, and I had been told 
that Atchison was a rough place — energetic but coarse. 
I think I wrote you from St. Louis that I had found 
there were only three actual engagements in Kansas, 
and that my list which gave Kansas City twice was a 
mistake. So I decided to take Atchison. I made a 



308 BRET HARTE 

hundred dollars by the lecture, and it is yours, for your- 
self. Nan, to buy "Minxes " with, if you want, for it is 
over and above the amount Eliza and I footed up 
on my lecture list. I shall send it to you as soon as 
the bulk of the pressing claims are settled. 

Everything thus far has gone well ; besides my lec- 
ture of to-night I have one more to close Kansas, and 
then I go on to St. Joseph. I 've been greatly touched 
with the very honest and sincere liking which these 
Western people seem to have for me. They seem to 
have read everything I have written — and appear to 
appreciate the best. Think of a rough fellow in a bear- 
skin coat and blue shirt repeating to me Conce'pcion 
de Arguello ! Their strange good taste and refine- 
ment under that rough exterior — even their tact — 
are wonderful to me. They are " Kentucks " and 
" Dick BuUens " with twice the refinement and ten- 
derness of their California brethren. . . . 

I 've seen but one [woman] that interested me — an 
old negro wench. She was talking and laughing out- 
side my door the other evening, but her laugh was so 
sweet and unctuous and musical — so full of breadth 
and goodness that I went outside and talked to her 
while she was scrubbing the stones. She laughed as a 
canary bii'd sings — because she could n't help it. It did 
me a world of good, for it was before the lecture, at 
twilight, when I am very blue and low-toned. She had 
been a slave. 

I expected to have heard from you here. I 've noth- 
ing from you or Eliza since last Friday, when I got 
yours of the 12th. I shall direct this to Eliza's care, 
as I do not even know where you are. 
Your affectionate 

Frank. 



LETTERS 309 



LAFCADIO HEARN TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN 

[KuMAMOTO, Japan] 

January 17, 1893. 

Dear Chamberlain, — 

I 'm writing just because I feel lonesome ; is n't that 
selfish? However, if I can amuse you at all, you will 
forgive me. You have been away a whole year, — so 
perhaps you would like to hear some impressions of 
mine during that time. Here goes. 

The illusions are forever over ; but the memory of 
many pleasant things remains. I know much more 
about the Japanese than I did a year ago ; and still I 
am far from understanding them well. Even my own 
little wife is somewhat mysterious still to me, though 
always in a lovable way. Of course a man and woman 
know each other's hearts ; but outside of personal 
knowledge, there are race tendencies difficult to un- 
derstand. Let me tell one. In Oki we fell in love with 
a little Samurai boy, who was having a hard time of 
it, and we took him with us. He is now like an adopted 
son, — goes to school and all that. Well, I wished at 
first to pet him a little, but I found that was not in 
accordance with custom, and that even the boy did not 
understand it. At home, I therefore scarcely spoke to 
him at all ; he remained under the control of the wo- 
men of the house. They treated him kindly, — though 
I thought coldly. The relationship I could not quite 
understand. He was never praised and rarely scolded. 
A perfect code of etiquette was established between 
him and all the other persons in the house, according 
to degree and rank. He seemed extremely cold-man- 
nered, and perhaps not even grateful, that was, so far 



310 LAFCADIO HEARN 

as I could see. Nothing seemed to move his young 
placidity, — whether happy or unhappy his mien was 
exactly that of a stone Jizo. One day he let fall a lit- 
tle cup and broke it. According to custom, no one 
noticed the mistake, for fear of giving him pain. Sud- 
denly I saw tears streaming down his face. The mus- 
cles of the face remained quite smilingly placid as 
usual, but even the will could not control tears. They 
came freely. Then everybody laughed, and said kind 
things to him, till he began to laugh too. Yet that deli- 
cate sensitiveness no one like me could have guessed 
the existence of. 

But what followed surprised me more. As I said, 
he had been (in my idea) distantly treated. One day 
he did not return from school for three hours after 
the usual time. Then to my great surprise, the women 
began to cry, — to cry passionately. I had never been 
able to imagine alarm for the boy could have affected 
them so. And the servants ran over town in real, not 
pretended, anxiety to find him. He had been taken to 
a teacher's house for something relating to school mat- 
ters. As soon as his voice was heard at the door, every- 
thing was quiet, cold, and amiably polite again. And 
I marvelled exceedingly. 

Sensitiveness exists in the Japanese to an extent 
never supposed by the foreigners who treat them 
harshly at the open ports. . . . The Japanese master 
is never brutal or cruel. How Japanese can serve 
a certain class of foreigners at all, I can't under- 
stand. . . . 

This Orient knows not our deeper pains, nor can it 
even rise to our larger joys ; but it has its pains. Its 
life is not so sunny as might be fancied from its happy 
aspect. Under the smile of its toiling millions there 



LETTERS 311 

is suffering bravely hidden and unselfishly borne ; and 
a lower intellectual range is counterbalanced by a 
childish sensitiveness to make the suffering balance 
evenly in the eternal order of things. 

Therefore I love the people very much, more and 
more, the more I know them. . . . 
And with this, I say good-night. 
Ever most truly, 

Lafcadio Heakn. 



CHARLES ELIOT NORTON TO WILLIAM DEAN 
HOWELLS 

Shady Hill, 2 May, 1902. 

" The Kentons " have been a great comfort to me. 
I have been in my chamber, with a slight attack of 
illness, for two or three weeks, and I received them 
one morning. I could not have had kinder or more 
entertaining visitors, and I was sorry when, after two 
or three days, I had to say Good-bye to them. They 
are very " natural " people, " just Western." I am 
grateful to you for making me acquainted with them. 

" Just Western " is the acme of praise. I think I 
once told you what pleasure it gave me as a compli- 
ment. Several years ago at the end of one of our 
Christmas Eve receptions, a young fellow from the 
West, taking my hand and bidding me Good-night, 
said with great cordiality, " Mr. Norton, I 've had a 
delightful time ; it 's been just Western " f 

" The Kentons " is really, my dear Ho wells, an ad- 
mirable study of life, and as it was read to me my 
chief pleasure in listening was in your sympathetic, 
creative imagination, your insight, your humour, and 



312 CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 

all your other gifts, which make your stories, I be- 
lieve, the most faithful representations of actual life 
that were ever written. Other stories seem unreal 
after them, and so when we had finished " The Kent- 
ons," nothing would do for entertainment but another 
of your books : so now we are almost at the end of 
" Silas Lapham," which I find as good as I found it 
fifteen or sixteen years ago. As Gray's idea of pleas- 
ure was to lie on a sofa and have an endless suc- 
cession of stories by Crebillon, — mine is to have no 
end of Howells ! . . . 



NOTES 

Letter from William Vaughn Moody: — 
darkened counsel: — See Job, 38: 2. Moody seems to be 
referring here to the uncertainty of his plans for the future. 

Letter from Bret Harte: — 

Franky : — Francis King Harte, Bret Harte's second son, 
who was eight years old at this time. 

Concepcion de Arguello: — One of Bret Harte's longer 
poems. 

Kentuck : — A rough but kindly character in Harte's The 
Luck of Roaring Camp. 

Dick Bullen : — The chief character in How Santa Claus 
Came to Simpson's Bar. 

Frank : — Bret Harte's name was Francis Brett Hart(e), and 
his family usually called him Frank. 

Letter from Laf cadio Hearn : — 

Chamberlain: — Professor Chamberlain had lived for some 
years in Japan, when Hearn, in 1890, wrote to him, asking as- 
sistance in securing a position as teacher in the Japanese Gov- 
ernment Schools. The friendship between the two men continued 
until Hearn's death. 



LETTERS 313 

Samurai : — Pronounced sd' moo ri ; a member of the lesser 
nobility of Japan. 

Jizo : — A Japanese god, said to be the playmate of the ghosts 
of children. Stone images of Jizo are common in Japan. (See 
page 19 of The Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Heam.') 

EXERCISES IN LETTER WRITING 

You are planning a camping trip with several of your friends ; 
write to a friend who lives in another town, asking him or her 
to join the camping party. 

Write to a friend asking him, or her, to come to your house 
for dinner and to go with you afterward to see the moving pic- 
tures. 

Write a letter to accompany a borrowed book, which you are 
returning. Speak of the contents of the book, and the parts that 
you have particularly enjoyed. Express your thanks for the use 
of the volume. 

Write a letter to an intimate friend, telling of the occurrences 
of the last week. Do not hesitate to recount trifling events; 
but make your letter as varied and lively and interesting as pos- 
sible. 

Write to a friend about the new house or apartment that your 
family has lately moved into. 

Write to a friend or a relative who is visiting in a large city, 
asking him or her to purchase some especial article that you 
cannot get in your home town. Explain exactly what you want 
and tell how much you are willing to pay. Speak of enclosing 
the money, and do not fail to express the gratitude that you will 
feel if your friend will make the purchase for you. 

You have been invited to spend the week-end in a town not 
far from your home. Write explaining why you cannot accept 
the invitation. Make your letter personal and pleasant. 

Write to some member of your family explaining how you 
have altered your room to make it more to your taste than it 
has been. If you have not really changed the room, imagine that 
you have done so, and that it is now exactly as you want it to be. 

You have heard of a family that is in great need. Write to 
one of your friends, telling the circumstances and asking her to 
help you in providing food and clothing for the children in the 
family. 



314 LETTERS 

You have just heard some startling news about an old friend 
whom you have not seen for some time. Write to another friend 
who you know will be interested, and relate the news that you 
have heard. 

Write to one of your teachers explaining why you are late in 
handing in a piece of work. 

Your uncle has made you a present of a sum of money. Thank 
him for the money and tell him what you think you will do with 
it. 

A schoolmate is kept at home by illness. Write, offering your 
sympathy and services, and telling the school news. 

You have had an argument with a friend on a subject of in- 
terest to you both. Since seeing this friend, you have run across 
an article in a magazine, which supports your view of the ques- 
tion. Write to your friend and tell him about the substance of 
the article. 

Your mother has hurt her hand and cannot write; she has 
asked you to write to a friend of hers about some business con- 
nected with the Woman's Club. 

You have arrived at home after a week's visit with a friend. 
Write your friend's mother, expressing the pleasure that the visit 
has given you. Speak particularly of the incidents of the visit, 
and show a lively appreciation of the kindness of your friends. 

A friend whom you have invited to visit you has written say- 
ing that she (or he) is unable to accept your invitation. Write 
expressing your regret. You might speak of the plans you had 
made in anticipation of the visit; you might also make a more 
or less definite suggestion regarding a later date for the arrival 
of your friend. 

You are trying to secure a position. Write to some one for 
whom you have worked, or some one who knows you well, ask- 
ing for a recommendation that you can use in applying for a 
position. 

Write to your brother (or some other near relative), telling 
about a trip that you have recently taken. 

Write to one of your friends who is away at school, telling of 
the athletic situation in the high school you are attending. As- 
sume that your friend is acquainted with many of the students 
in the high school. 

You are sending some kodak films to be developed by a pro- 
fessional photographer. Explain to him what you are sending 



LETTERS 315 

and what you want done. Speak of the price that he asks for 
his work, and the money that you are enclosing. 

Write a letter applying for a position. If possible, tell how 
you have heard of the vacancy. State your qualifications, especi- 
ally the education and training that you have had; if you have 
had any experience, tell definitely what it has been. Mention the 
recommendations that you are enclosing, or give references to 
several persons who will write concerning your character and 
ability. Do not urge your qualifications, or make any promises, 
but tell about yourself as simply and impersonally as possible. 
Close your letter without any elaborate expressions of "lioping " 
or "trusting" or "thanking." "Very truly yours," or "Very 
respectfully yours," will be sufficient. 

You have secured the position for which you applied. Write 
expressing your pleasure in obtaining the situation. Ask for 
information as to the date on which you are to begin work. 

Write to a friend or a relative, telling about your new po- 
sition : how you secured it; what your work will be; what you 
hope will come of it. 

Write a brief respectful letter asking for money that is owed 
you. 

Write to a friend considerably older than yourself, asking for 
advice as to the appropriate college or training school for you 
to enter when you have finished the high school course. 

BOOKS FOR READING AND STUDY 

Letters and Letter-writing Charity Dye 

Success in Letter-writing Sherwin Cody 

How to do Business by Letter .... " " 

Charm and Courtesy in Letter-writing . Frances B. Callaway 

Studies for Letters • " " " 

The Gentlest Art E. V. Lucas 

The Second Post " " " 

The Friendly Craft F. D. Hanscom 

Life and Letters of Miss Alcott . . . E. D. Cheney (Ed.) 

Vailima Letters . R. L. Stevenson 

Letters of William Vaughn Moody . . Daniel Mason (Ed.) 

Letters from Colonial Children • . . Eva March Tappan 

Woman as Letter-writers A. M. Ingpen. 

The Etiquette of Correspondence., , . Helen E. Gavit 



EXERCISES IN DRAMATIC 
COMPOSITION 

I. Write a conversation suggested by one of the following 
situations. Wherever it seems desirable to do so, give, in paren- 
theses, directions for the action, and indicate the gestures and 
the facial expressions of the speakers. 

1. Tom has had trouble at school ; he is questioned at home about 
the matter. 

2. Two girls discuss a party that has taken place the night before. 

3. A child and his mother are talking about Christmas. 

4. Clayton Wells is running for the presidency of the Senior class 
in the high school ; he talks with some of his schoolmates, and is 
talked about. 

5. There has been a fire at the factory ; some of the men talk 
about its origin. 

6. A girl borrows her sister's pearl pin and loses it. 

7. Unexpected guests have arrived ; while they are removing their 
wraps in the hall, a conversation takes place in the kitchen. 

8. Anna wishes to go on a boating expedition, but her father and 
mother object. 

9. The crops in a certain district have failed ; two young farmers 
talk over the situation. 

10. Two girls are getting dinner ; their mother is away, and they 
are obliged to plan and do everything themselves. 

II. A boy has won a prize, and two or three other boys are talking 
■with him. 

12. The prize-winning student has gone, and the other boys are 
talking about him. 

13. The furnace fire has gone out ; various members of the family 
express their annoyance, and the person who is to blame defends 
himself. 

14. Grandfather has lost his spectacles. 

15. Laura has seen a beautiful hat in a shop window, and talks with 
her mother about it. 



DRAMATIC COMPOSITION 317 

16. Two men talk of the coming' election of city officers. 

17. A boy has been removed from the football team on acconnt of 
his low standings ; members of the team discuss the situation. 

18. Sylvia asks her younger brother to go on an errand for her ; he 
does not wish to go ; the conversation becomes spirited. 

19. Grandmother entertains another old lady at afternoon tea. 

20. A working man is accused of stealing a dollar bill from the 
cook in the house where he is temporarily employed. 

21. Mary Sturgis talks with her mother about going away to 
college. 

22. A young man talks with his sister about woman's sn£Erage ; 
they become somewhat excited. 

23. A middle-aged couple talk about adopting a child. 

24. There is a strike at the mills ; some of the employees discusa 
it ; the employers discuss it among themselves. 

25. An aunt in the city has written asking Louise to visit her; 
Louise talks with several members of her family about going. 

26. Two boys talk about the ways in which they earn money, and 
what they do with it. 

27. Albert Gleason has had a run-away ; his neighbors talk about it. 

28. Two brothers quarrel over a horse. 

29. Ruth's new dress does not satisfy her. 

30. The storekeeper discusses neighborhood news with some of 
his customers. 

31. Will has had a present of a five-dollar gold-piece ; his sisters 
tell him what he ought to do with it ; his ideas on the subject are not 
the same as theirs. i 

32. An old house, in which a well-to-do family have lived for many 
years, is to be torn down ; a group of neighbors talk about the house 
and the family. 

33. A young man talks with a business man about a position. 

34. Harold buys a canoe ; he converses with the boy who sells it to 
him, and also with some of the members of his own f amUy. 

35. Two old men talk about the pranks they played when they 
were boys. 

36. Several young men talk about a recent baseball game. 

37. Several young men talk about a coming League game. 

38. Breakfast is late. 

39. A mysterious stranger has appeared in the village ; a group of 
people talk about him, 

40. Herbert Elliott takes out his father's automobile without per- 
mission, and damages it seriously ; he tries to explain. 

41. Jerome Connor has just " made " the high school football team. 

42. Two boys plan a camping trip. 



318 DRAMATIC COMPOSITION 

43. Seyeral boys are camping, and one of the number does not seem 
■willing to do his share of the work. 

44. Several young people consider what they are going to do when 
they have finished school. 

45. Two women talk about the spring fashions. 

II. Choose some familiar fairy-tale or well known children's 
story, and put it into the form of a little plaj' for children. Find a 
story that is rather short, and that has a good deal of dialogue 
in it. In writing the play, try to make the conversation simple 
and lively. 

III. In a story book for children, find a short story and put 
it into dialogue form. It will be wise to select a story that 
already contains a large proportion of conversation. 

IV. From a magazine or a book of short stories (not for chil- 
dren), select a very brief piece of narration, and put it into 
dramatic form. After you have finished, write out directions 
for the setting of the stage, if you have not already done so, and 
give your idea of what the costuming ought to be. 



MODERN BOOKS FOR HOME READING 

Not included iu the lists of Collateral Readings 
BOOKS OP FICTION 

Two Gentlemen of Kentucky James Lane Allen 

Standish of Standish Jane G. Austin 

D'ri and I Irving Baeheller 

EbenHolden " « 

The Halfback R. H. Barbour 

For King or Country James Barnes 

A Loyal Traitor « " 

A Bow of Orange Ribbon Amelia E. Barr 

Jan Vedder's Wife . « « » 

Remember the Alamo « «( <« 

The Little Minister J. M. Barrie 

The Little White Bird " " " 

Sentimental Tommy " " " 

Wee MacGregor J. J. Bell. 

Looking Backward Edward Bellamy 

Master Skylark John Bennett 

A Princess of Thule William Black 

Lome Doone R. D. Blackmore 

Mary Gary K. L. Bosher. 

Miss Gibbie Gault " " " 

Jane Eyre . . . .- Charlotte Bronte 

Villette " " 

Meadow Grass Alice Brown 

Tiverton Tales " « 

The Story of a Ploughboy James Bryce 

My Robin F. H. Burnett 

The Secret Garden " " " 

T. Tembarom " " " 

The Jackknife Man Ellis Parker Butler 

The Begum's Daughter E. L. Bynner 

Bonaventure . . . G. W. Cable 

Dr. Sevier " " " 



320 MODERN BOOKS FOR HOME READING 

The Golden Rule Dollivers . . Margaret Cameron 

The Lady of Fort St. John . . Mary Hartwell Catherwood 

Lazarre " " " 

Old Kaskaskia " " «« 

The Romance of Dollard ..." « *« 

The Story of Tonty " " " 

The White Islander « . « « 

Richard Carvel Winston Churchill 

A Connecticut Yankee in King 

Arthur's Court Samuel L. Clemens (Mark 

Twain) 

Pudd'nhead Wilson Samuel L. Clemens 

The Prince and the Pauper . . « <« « 

Tom Sawyer " " " 

John Halifax, Gentleman . . . D. M. Craik (Miss Mulock) 

The Red Badge of Courage . . Stephen Crane. 

Whilomville Stories " " 

A Roman Singer F. M. Crawford 

Saracinesca " •* " 

Zoroaster « " " 

The Lilac Sunbonnet . . . . S. R. Crockett 

The Stickit Minister ...."" " 

Smith College Stories .... J. D. Daskam [Baconj 

Gallegher . . R. H. Davis 

The Princess Aline " " " 

Soldiers of Fortune « « « 

Old Chester Tales Margaret Deland 

The Story of a Child .... " " 

Hugh Gwyeth B. M. Dix. 

Soldier Rigdale « « « 

Rebecca Mary Annie Hamilton Donnell 

The Very Small Person ... " " " 

The Adventures of Sherlock 

Holmes A. Conan Doyle 

Micah Clarke " " " 

The Refugees " " " 

Uncle Bernac " " " 

The Black Tulip Alexander Dumas 

The Three Musketeers .... " " 

Doctor Luke of the Labrador . Norman Duncan 

The Story of Sonny Sahib . . . Sara J. Duncan 



MODERN BOOKS FOR HOME READING 321 

The Hoosier Schoolboy .... Edward Eggleston 
The Hoosier Schoolmaster . . " " 

The Honorable Peter Stirling . P. L. Ford 

Janice Meredith " " «< 

In the Valley ........ Harold Frederic 

A New England Nun . . . . M. E. Wilkins Freeman 

The Portion of Labor ....«" « " 

Six Trees " « " « 

Friendship Village Zona Gale 

Boy Life on the Prairie . . . Hamlin Garland 
Prairie Folks ....... " «' 

Toby: The Story of a Dog . . Elizabeth Goldsmith 

College Girls Abby Carter Goodloe 

Glengarry School Days .... Charles W. Gordon (Ralph 

Connor) 

The Man from Glengarry . . . Charles W. Gordon 

The Prospector " " « 

The Sky Pilot " " « 

The Man Without a Country . . E. E. Hale 

Nights with Uncle Remus . . J. C. Harris 

The Log of a Sea Angler . . . C. F. Holder 

Phroso Anthony Hope [Hawkins] 

The Prisoner of Zenda .... " " " 

Rupert of Hentzau " " " 

One Summer B. W. Howard 

The Flight of Pony Baker . . . W. D. Howells 

Tom Brown at Oxford .... Thomas Hughes 
Tom Brown's School Days ... " " 

The Lady of the Barge .... W. W. Jacobs 

Odd Craft " " " 

Ramona H. H. Jackson 

Little Citizens Myra Kelly 

Wards of Liberty *' " 

Horseshoe Robinson J. P. Kennedy 

The Brushwood Boy Rudyard Kipling 

Captains Courageous .... " " 

The Jungle Book " " 

Kim " " 

Puck of Pook's Hill " " 

Tales of the Fish Patrol . . . Jack London 

The Slowcoach E. V. Lucas 



322 MODERN BOOKS FOR HOME READING 

Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush . Ian Maclaren (John Watson) 

A Doctor of the Old School . . " « " « 

Peg o' my Heart J. H. Manners 

Emmy Lou = . . G. M. Martin 

Tilly: A Mennonite Maid . . . H. R. Martin 

Jim Davis John Masefield 

Four Feathers A. E. W. Mason 

The Adventures of Frangois . . S. W. Mitchell 

Hugh Wynne " " " 

Anne of Avonlea L. M. Montgomery 

Anne of Green Gables ...."" " 

The Chronicles of Avonlea . . « « " 

Down the Ravine Mary N. Murfree (Charles 

Egbert Craddock) 

In the Tennessee Mountains . . Mary N. Murfree 
The Mystery of Witch-Face 

Mountain " « " 
The Prophet of the Great Smoky 

Mountains " " " 

The House of a Thousand Candles Meredith Nicholson 

Mother Kathleen Norris 

Peanut A. B. Paine 

Judgments of the Sea .... Ralph D. Paine 

The Man with the Iron Hand . John C. Parish 

Pierre and his People .... Gilbert Parker 

Seats of the Mighty ..... " « 

When Valmond Came to Pontiac " " 

A Madonna of the Tubs . . . E. S. Phelps [Ward] 
A Singular Life ......"" " 

Freckles G. S. Porter 

Ezekiel Lucy Pratt 

Ezekiel Expands « « 

November Joe ....... Hesketh Prichard 

Men of Iron Howard Pyle 

The Merry Adventures of Robin 

Hood , « " 

The Splendid Spur A. T. Quiller-Couch 

Lovey Mary Alice Hegan Rice 

Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch " " 

Sandy " « " 

The Feet of the Furtive . . . C. G. D. Roberts 



MODERN BOOKS FOR HOME READING 323 

The Heart of an Ancient Wood . C. G. D, Roberts 

The Wreck of the Grosvenor . . W. C. Russell 

Two Girls of Old New Jersey . Agnes C. Sage 

Little Jarvis MoUyi Elliot Seawall 

A Virginia Cavalier " " " 

The Quest of the Fish-Dog Skin J. W. Schultz 

The Black Arrow Robert Louis Stevenson 

David Balfour " " " 

The Master of Ballantrae ... " " " 

St. Ives " " " 

The Fugitive Blacksmith . . . CD. Stewart 
The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecka 

and Mrs. Aleshine Frank R. Stockton 

TheDusantes " » 

The Lady or the Tiger .... " " " 

The Merry Chanter " " " 

Rudder Grange u n u 

Napoleon Jackson Ruth McE. Stuart 

Sonny " " " 

Monsieur Beaucaire Booth Tarkington 

Expiation Octave Thanet (Alice 

French) 

Stories of a Western Town . . Octave Thanet 

The Golden Book of Venice . . F. L. Turnbull 

W. A. G.'s Tale Margaret Turnbull 

Ben Hur Lew Wallace 

A Fair God " " 

My Rag Picker Mary E. Waller 

The Wood Carver of 'Lympus . . " " " 

The Story of Ab Stanley Waterloo 

Daddy Long-Legs Jean Webster 

A Gentleman of France . . . Stanley J. Weyman 

Under the Red Robe .... « " " 

The Blazed Trail Stewart Edward White 

The Conjuror's House .... " " *' 

The Silent Places « " « 

The Westerners " " " 

A Certain Rich Man .... William Allen White 

The Court of Boyville .... " « « 

Stratagems and Spoils . . . . " " " 

The Gayworthys A. D. T. Whitney 



324 MODERN BOOKS FOR HOME READING 

Mother Carey's Chickens ... K. D. Wiggin [Riggs] 

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm . " " " 

The Chronicles of Rebecca . . " " " 

The Story of Waitstill Baxter . " " " 

Princeton Stories J. L. Williams 

Philosophy Four Owen Wister 

The Virginian " " 

Booties' Baby John Strange Winter (H. E. 

Stannard) 

The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys . Gulielma Zollinger (W. Z. 

Gladwin) 

NON-FICTION BOOKS 

The Klondike Stampede . . . E. T. Adney 

The Land of Little Rain . . . Mary Austin 

Camps in the Rockies .... W, A. Baillie-Grohman 

The Boys' Book of Inventions . R. S. Baker 

A Second Book of Inventions . " " " 

My Book of Little Dogs . . . F. T. Barton 

The Lighter Side of Irish Life . G. A. Birmingham (J. O. 

Hannay) 

Wonderful Escapes by Americans W. S. Booth 

The Training of Wild Animals . Frank Bostock 

Confederate Portraits .... Gamaliel Bradford 

American Fights and Fighters . Cyrus T. Brady 
Commodore Paul Jones ... " " ' " 

The Conquest of the Southwest . " " " 

The Every-Day Life of Abraham 

Lincoln F. F, Browne 

The Boyhood and Youth of Napo- 
leon Oscar Browning 

The New North Agnes Cameron 

The Boys' Book of Modern Mar- 
vels C. L. J. Clarke 

The Boys' Book of Airships , . " " " " 
Personal Recollections of Joan of 

Arc Samuel L. Clemens 

The Wireless Man F. A. Collins 

Old Boston Days and Ways . . M. C. Crawford 

Romantic Days in Old Boston . " " " 



MODERN BOOKS FOR HOME READING 325 

Harriet Beecher Stowe . . . . M. F. Crowe 

Wild Animals and the Camera . W. P. Dando 

Football P. H. Davis 

Stories of Inventors Russell Doubleday 

Navigating the Air Doubleday Page and Co. 

Mr. Dooley's Opinions .... F. P. Dunne 

Mr. Dooley's Philosophy . . . " " " 

Edison: His Life and Inventions Dyer and Martin 

Child Life in Colonial Days . . Alice Morse Earle 
Colonial Days in Old New York . « " « 
Stage Coach and Tavern Days . " " " 

Two Centuries of Costume in 

America " " *' 

Old Indian Days Charles Eastman 

The Life of the Fly J. H. Fabre 

The Life of the Spider .... « " *<■ 

The Wonders of the Heavens . Camilla Flammarion 

Boys and Girls: A Book of Verse J. W. Foley 

Following the Sun Flag . . . John Fox, Jr. 

Four Months Afoot in Spain . . Harry A. Franck 
A Vagabond Journey around the 

World « " « 

Zone Policeman 88 .... = " " " 

The Trail of the Gold Seeker . Hamlin Garland 

In Eastern Wonder Lands . . C. E. Gibson 
The Hearth of Youth: Poems for 

Young People Jeannette Gilder (Ed.) 

Heroes of the Elizabethan Age . Edward GiUiat 

Camping on Western Trails . . E. R. Gregor 

Camping in the Winter Woods . " " " 

American Big Game G. B. Grinnell (Ed.) 

Trail and Camp Fire .... Grinnell and Roosevelt (Ed.) 

Life at West Point H. I. Hancock 

Camp Kits and Camp Life . . C. S. Hanks 

The Boys' Parkman L. S. Hasbrouck (Ed.) 

Historic Adventures R. S. Holland 

Camp Fires in the Canadian 

Rockies W. T. Hornaday 

Our Vanishing Wild Life . . . " « " 
Taxidermyand Zoological Collect- 
ing " " " 



326 MODERN BOOKS FOR HOME READING 

Two Years in the Jungle . . . W. T. Hornaday 

My Mark Twain W. D. Howells 

A Woman's Way through Un- 
known Labrador ..... Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard 

Animal Competitors Ernest IngersoU 

My Lady of the Chimney Corner Alexander Irvine 
The Indians of the Painted Des- 
ert Region G. W. James 

The Boys' Book of Explorations . Tudor Jenks 
Through the South Sea with Jack 

London Martin Johnson 

A Wayfarer in China .... Elizabeth Kendall 

The Tragedy of Pelee .... George Kennan 

Recollections of a Drummer Boy H. M. Kieffer 

The Story of the Trapper . . . A. C. Laut 

Animals of the Past F. A. Lucas 

Marjorie Fleming L. Macbean (Ed.) 

From Sail to Steam A. T. Mahan 

JEgean Days and Other Sojourns J. Irving Manatt 

The Story of a Piece of Coal . . E. A. Martin 

The Friendly Stars Martha E. Martin 

The Boys' Life of Edison . . . W. H. Meadowcroft 

Serving the Republic .... Nelson A. Miles 

In Beaver World Enos A, Mills 

Mosquito Life E. G. Mitchell 

The Childhood of Animals . . P. C. Mitchell 

The Youth of Washington . . S. W. Mitchell 

Lewis Carroll Belle Moses 

Charles Dickens " " 

Louisa M. Alcott " « 

The Country of Sir Walter Scott C. S. Olcott 

Storytelling Poems F. J. Olcott (Ed.) 

Mark Twain : A Biography . . A. B. Paine 

The Man with the Iron Hand . John C. Parish 

Nearest the Pole Robert E. Peary 

A Book of Famous Verse . . . Agnes Repplier (Ed.) 

Florence Nightingale .... Laura E. Richards 

Children of the Tenements . . Jacob A. Riis 

The Wilderness Hunter . . . Theodore Roosevelt 

American Big Game Hunting . Roosevelt and Grinnell (Ed.) 
Hunting in Many Lands ... " « « 



MODERN BOOKS FOR HOME READING 327 

My Air Ships Alberto Santos-Dumont 

Paul Jones Molly Elliott Seawell 

With the Indians in the Rockies . J. W. Schultz 

Curiosities of the Sky .... Garrett P. Serviss 

Where Rolls the Oregon . . . Dallas Lore Sharp 
Nature in a City Yard ....CM. Skinner 

The Wild White Woods . . . Russell D. Smith 
The Story of the New England 

Whalers J. R. Spears 

Camping on the Great Lakes . . R. S. Spears 

My Life with the Eskimos . . Vilhjalmar Stefansson 

With Kitchener to Khartum . . G. W. Stevens 

Across the Plains R. L. Stevenson 

Letters of a Woman Home- 
steader , Elinore P. Stewart 

Hunting the Elephant in Africa . C. H. Stigand 

The Black Bear W.H.Wright 

The Grizzly Bear « « « 

George Washington Woodrow Wilson 

The Workers : The East . . . W. A. WyckofE 

The Workers : The West . . . " " « 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: IVlagnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Sept. 2009 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

111 TtiomsQn ParX Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



